Axel, opening his case. "That will
not corrupt you as much as the beefsteak, and will soothe you a little
on your way home. For you must go home and get to bed. You are as near
an illness as any man I ever saw."

The tears were so near, so terribly near, that, hardly knowing what he
did, and sooner than trust himself to speak, Klutz took a cigar and lit
it at the match Axel held for him. His hand shook pitifully.

"Now go home, my dear Klutz," said Axel very kindly. "Tell Frau Pastor
to give you some food, and then get to bed. I wish you would have taken
the beefsteak--here is your hat. If you like, we will talk about this
nonsense later on. Believe me, it is nonsense. You will be the first to
say so next week."

And he ushered him out to the steps, and watched him go down them,
uneasy lest he should stumble and fall, so weak did he seem to be. "What
a hot wind!" he exclaimed. "You will have a dusty walk home. Go slowly.
Good-night."

"Poor devil," he thought, as Klutz without speaking went down the avenue
into the darkness with unsteady steps, "poor young devil--the highest
possible opinion of himself, and the smallest possible quantity of
brains; a weak will and strong instincts; much unwholesome study of the
Old Testament in Hebrew with Manske; a body twenty years old, and the
finest spring I can remember filling it with all sorts of anti-parsonic
longings. I believe I ought to have taken him home. He looked as though
he would faint."

This last thought disturbed Axel. The image of Klutz fainting into a
ditch and remaining in it prostrate all night, refused to be set aside;
and at last he got his hat and went down the avenue after him.

But Klutz, who had shuffled along quickly, was nowhere to be seen. Axel
opened the avenue gate and looked down the road that led past the
stables to the village and parsonage, and then across the fields to
Kleinwalde; he even went a little way along it, with an uneasy eye on
the ditches, but he did not see Klutz, either upright or prostrate.
Well, if he were in a ditch, he said to himself, he would not drown; the
ditches were all as empty, dry, and burnt-up as four weeks' incessant
drought and heat could make them. He turned back repeating that
eminently consolatory proverb, _Unkraut vergeht nicht_, and walked
quickly to his own gate; for it was late, and he had work to do, and he
had wasted more time than he could afford with Klutz. A man on a horse
coming from the opposite d