inter in Freiberg, his first step was to
quit the little hotel, with its mouldy stone-vaulted entrance and its
columned dining-room, under whose full-centered arches close beery and
smoky fumes lingered persistently, and seek quieter student-lodgings
in the heart of the town. His choice was mainly influenced by a
thin-railed balcony, twined through and through by the shoots of a
vigorous Virginia creeper, that flamed and flickered in the breezy
October sunsets in strong relief against the curtains that drifted
whitely out and in through the open window. So, with the steady-going
and hale old Frau Spritzkrapfen he took up his quarters, fully
persuading himself that he did so for the sake of the stray
home-breaths that seemed to stir the scarlet vine-leaves more gently
for him, and ignoring pretty Lottchen's great, earnest Saxon eyes as
best he could.

A sunny morning followed his removal to Frau Spritzkrapfen's tidy
home. There had been a slight rain in the early night, and the
footways were yet bright and moist in patches that the slanting
morning rays were slowly coaxing away. Ronald Wyde, having set his
favorite books handily on the dimity-draped table, which comprised for
him the process of getting to rights, and having given more than one
glance of amused wonderment at the naive blue-and-white scriptural
tiles that cased his cumbrous four-story earthenware stove, and smiled
lazily at poor Adam's obvious and sudden indigestion, even while the
uneaten half-apple remained in his guilty hand, he stepped out on his
balcony, leaned his elbows among the crimson leaves, and took in the
healthful morning air in great draughts. It was a Sunday; the bells of
the gray minster hard by were iterating their clanging calls to the
simple townsfolk to come and be droned to in sleepy German gutturals
from the carved, pillar-hung pulpit inside. Looking down, he saw
thick-ankled women cluttering past in loose wooden-soled shoes, and
dumpy girls with tow-braids primly dangling to their hips, convoying
sturdy Dutch-built luggers of younger brothers up the easy slope that
led to the church and the bells. Presently Frau Spritzkrapfen and
dainty Lottchen, rosy with soap and health, slipped through the
doorway beneath him out into the little church-bound throng, and, as
they disappeared, left the house and street somehow unaccountably
alone. Feeling this, Ronald Wyde determined on a stroll.

Something in the Sabbath stillness around him led