to persuade them to go part of the way with us.

So we hired two sleighs to convey us to a village distant about an
hour's ride, from which we were to send them back in one, while my
friend and I pursued our journey in the other.

After a lively dinner with our friends they joined us.

The snow-storm, which had ceased for several hours, began again, growing
more and more violent as we drove on. I never saw such masses of the
largest flakes, and just outside the village where the girls were to
turn back the horses could barely force their way through the white mass
which transformed the whole landscape into a single snowy coverlet.

The clouds seemed inexhaustible, and when the time for departure came
the driver declared that it would be impossible to go back to Cassel.

The girls, who, exhilarated by the swift movement through the cold,
bracing air, had entered into our merriment, grew more and more anxious.
Our well-meant efforts to comfort them were rejected; they were angry
with us for placing them in such an unpleasant position.

The lamps were lighted when I thought of taking the landlady into our
confidence and asking her to care for the poor frightened children. She
was a kind, sensible woman, and though she at first exclaimed over their
heedlessness, she addressed them with maternal tenderness and showed
them to the room they were to occupy.

They came down again at supper reassured, and we ate the rustic meal
together very merrily. One of them wrote a letter to her father, saying
that they had been detained by the snow at the house of an acquaintance,
and a messenger set off with it at sunrise, but we were told that the
road would not be passable before noon.

Yet, gay as our companions were at breakfast, the thought of
entertaining them longer seemed irksome, and as the church bells were
ringing some one proposed that we should go.

A path had been shovelled, and we were soon seated in the country
church. The pastor, a fine-looking man of middle age, entered, and
though I no longer remember his text, I recollect perfectly that he
spoke of the temptations which threaten to lure us from the right paths
and the means of resisting them.

One of the most effectual, he said, was the remembrance of those to whom
we owe love and respect. I thought of my mother and blind old Langethal,
of Tzschirner, and of Herbert Pernice, and, dissatisfied with myself,
resolved to do in the future not only what was seemly,