may be home before the wagon."

Therewith he ran with me across a long cottage-court, lifted me over a
hedge, climbing after me himself; then through two or three more strange
gardens, everywhere stepping over the hedges; and at last we reached our
own garden.

But, in Heaven's name, had we committed some sin, that we ran thus,
skulking from hiding-place to hiding-place?

As we reached the courtyard, the wagon was just entering. Three
retainers waited for it in the yard, and immediately closed the gate
after it.

Grandmother stood outside on the terrace and kissed us when we arrived.

Again there followed a short whispering between my brother and the
domestics; whereupon the latter seized pitchforks and began to toss down
the hay from the wain.

Could they not do so by daylight?

Grandmother sat down on a bench on the terrace, and drew my head to her
bosom. Lorand leaned his elbows upon the rail of the terrace and watched
the work.

The hay was tossed into a heap and the high wind drove the chaff on to
the terrace, but no one told the servants to be more careful.

This midnight work was, for me, so mysterious.

Only once I saw that Lorand turned round as he stood, and began to weep;
thereupon grandmother rose, and they fell each upon the other's breast.

I clutched their garments and gazed up at them trembling. Not a single
lamp burned upon the terrace.

"Sh!" whispered grandmother, "don't weep so loudly," she was herself
choking with sobs. "Come, let us go."

With that she took my hand, and, leaning upon my brother's arm, came
down with us into the courtyard, down to the wagon, which stood before
the garden gate. Two or more heaps of straw hid _it_ from the eye; it
was visible only when we reached the bottom of the wagon.

On that wagon lay the coffin of my father.

So this it was that in the dead of night we had stealthily brought into
the village, that we had in so skulking a manner escorted, and had so
concealed; and of which we had spoken in whispers. This it was that we
had wept over in secret--my father's coffin. The four retainers lifted
it from the wagon, then carried it on their shoulders toward the garden.
We went after it, with bared heads and silent tongues.

A tiny rivulet flowed through our garden; near this rivulet was a
little round building, whose gaudy door I had never seen open.

From my earliest days, when I was unable to rise from the ground if once
I sat down, the little roun