the gates of hell had opened
before her, or the destruction of the world had begun.

Frantic with terror, she sprang back from the window, through which the
raindrops were already sprinkling her face. They cooled her flushed
cheeks and brought her back to reality. The offence she had just
committed was no trivial one. She, whom Herr Ortlieb, with entire
confidence, had placed in the service of the fair young girl whose
invalid mother could not care for her, had permitted herself to be
induced to persuade Eva, who was scarcely beyond childhood, to a
rendezvous with a man whom she represented to the inexperienced maiden as
a godly, virtuous knight, though she knew from Biberli how far the latter
surpassed his master in fidelity and steadfastness.

"Lead us not into temptation!" How often she had repeated the words in
the Lord's Prayer, and now she herself had become the serpent that
tempted into sin the innocent child whom duty should have commanded her
to guard.

No, no! The guilt for which she was threatened with punishment was by no
means small, and even if her earthly judge did not call her to account,
she would go to confession to-morrow and honestly perform the penance
imposed.

Moved by these thoughts, she gazed across the courtyard to the convent.
Just at that moment the lightning again flashed, the thunder pealed, and
she covered her face with her hands. When she lowered her arms she saw on
the roof of the nuns' granary, which adjoined the cow-stable, a slender
column of smoke, followed by a narrow tongue of flame, which grew
steadily brighter.

The lightning had set it on fire.

Sympathy for the danger and losses of others forced her own grief and
anxiety into the background and, without pausing to think, she slipped on
her shoes, snatched her shawl from the chest, and ran downstairs,
shouting: "The lightning has struck! The convent is burning!"

Just at that moment the door of the chamber occupied by the two sisters
opened, and Ernst Ortlieb, with tangled hair and pallid cheeks, came
toward her.

Within the room the dim light of the little lamp and the fiery glare of
the lightning illumined tear-stained, agitated faces.

After Heinz Schorlin had called to her, and Els had hurried to her aid,
Eva, clad in her long, plain night robe, and barefooted, just as she had
risen from her couch, followed the maid to her room. What must the
knight, who but yesterday, she knew, had looked up to her as to a saint