d this evening they all have
talked it over that I should lead the boys of Upper Wood into battle,
and I have thought it all over and prepared ahead. Then I would be
Fabius Cunctator, and would lead my troops above on the hill round and
round it and would not attack, for you must know that is much safer, and
so Hannibal could do nothing and could not attack me."

"Is Hannibal still living then?" asked Ritz serenely.

"Oh, Ritz, how indescribably ignorant you are!" Edi remarked
compassionately. "He died more than a thousand years ago. But big Churi,
the leader of the Middle Lotters, our enemies, is Hannibal. But you see,
I just remember something: Churi is not a real Hannibal, for he was a
great and noble general, and Churi cannot represent him; but do you know
what, we can take the strange boy Erick, for Hannibal!--he looks quite
different from Churi,--shall we?"

"That is all the same to me since we cannot be in the fight," remarked
Ritz.

"That is true, we dare not, I had quite forgotten that," lamented Edi.
"If I only knew what we could do to be in this fight and yet not do
anything that is forbidden."

"Don't you know an example in the world's history?" asked Ritz, to whom
his brother presented so often, in cases of need, examples out of this
rich fountain.

"No. If we only lived like the old Greeks," Edi answered with a deep
sigh. "When they wanted to know anything of which no one knew the
answer, they quickly drove to Delphi to the oracle and asked advice.
Then there was an answer at once and they knew what was to be done. But
now there are no more oracles, not even in Greece. Isn't that too bad?"

"Yes, that is too bad," said Ritz rather sleepily, "but I am sure you
will think of another example."

Edi began at once to think, but however much he thought, and groped in
his memory and upheaved what he had stored away in his brain, he could
not find in the whole history of the world one single case where some
one had carried out something that the father had forbidden, and yet
stood afterwards with honor before him. For that was what Edi was trying
to find; and he was sitting straight up in his bed in the dark, and in
spite of all his endeavors he could find no way out. And when he now
heard the deep breathing of the sweetly sleeping Ritz, he became too
discouraged to try any more. He lay down on his pillow and was soon
dreaming about the uniform of Fabius Cunctator.

Soon after this Marianne too lay down