blood was flowing. He thrust the physician away with
violence.

"I will not be bound! Off with the whole of you!"

I kneeled down, and said that he had not been fighting against his son;
that Roland had, been missing for three months, and had evidently been
taken prisoner.

"A prisoner! woe! woe! woe!" he shrieked. "A prisoner! Oh, she is to
blame--she! she! I did not want to! I had to--she wanted to ride on
horseback--she sits splendidly--to play the amazon."

He burst into a scornful laugh. "On the sea--on the ocean--" continued
he, "there I wanted to be--I had to follow--I saw her fall--she was
beautiful even in death--an enchantress--an enchantress!"

The physician beckoned to me; I knew what he meant. I asked him if he
desired anything.

He stared at me.

"Yonder--give me that--give!"

He pointed to a beautiful heath-plant not far off. Adams had observed
our look and the words. He tore up a whole bunch of ericas, and gave
them into the hand of the dying man, who gazed at him with eyes almost
starting out of his head. Then a smile came over his face; drawing
himself up with a mighty energy, he fell back uttering one terrible
shriek, and his limbs were straightened in death. He died with the
heath-plants in his clenched hand.

Oh, how much I have gone through, how much I have been forced to
suffer! Nothing harder can ever befall me.

As we buried him in the earth, and covered him over with heaths, I wept
over a man whose vast powers had led him astray. What would have been
his fate, if----

Here I was interrupted in the midst of my writing. Since those lines
were penned, I have buried another corpse.

I was called to Adams, who had neglected having his wounds attended to,
and now it was too late. He asked after me. I stood at his bed-side,
and with a last exertion of strength, he asked me;--

"Herr Major, can any one steal a thing like that?"

"What do you mean?"

"Can a man like that belong to our order, and have the sign?"

"You see that he can."

"What do the brethren have swords for then? Why did I not--" cried he,
gnashing his teeth.

He clenched his fists, raised himself up, and then sank back. His
savage nature, which had been only repressed and held in constraint,
broke out in the last death-struggle.

Oh, I can write nothing more. I have been deceived in myself. I
believed myself fortified against everything, but I am not. I beg you,
dear Herr Weidmann, to inform my mother of the de