gly; "but I know
how you mean it. I never touched a countess before in all my life; but
they're human beings, just like the rest of us."

Irma heaved a deep sigh. She told her rescuers that she would go with
them, but only on condition that no one except themselves was to know
who she was. She wished to live concealed and unknown, and, if she were
discovered, she would take her life.

"Don't do that again," said the old woman, with a stern voice. "Don't
say that again. It won't do to trifle with such things. That's no
threat. But here you have my hand and my word of honor that not a word
shall pass my lips."

"Nor mine either!" exclaimed Walpurga, laying her hand, with that of
her mother, in Irma's.

"Tell me one thing," asked the mother. "Why didn't you go to a convent?
One can do that nowadays."

"I mean to expiate in freedom," said she.

"I understand you. You're right."

Not another word was spoken. The mother held her hand upon Irma's
forehead, on which she now bound a white handkerchief. "It'll be well in
a week, and there won't be a scar left," she said, consolingly.

"The white cloth shall remain there as long as I live," replied Irma.
She now asked them to provide her with other clothes, before she showed
herself in Hansei's presence.

Walpurga hurried back to the inn near the landing-place. Here she found
Hansei in an angry mood, and scolding terribly. Every interruption
annoyed him. He had enough to look after, as it was. There was more
work put upon him than upon the horses in the wagon. He was in that
excited state, often produced by travel and change of abode, in which
one's better self seems to disappear, and when a restless and homeless
feeling renders its possessor excessively irritable. Besides that, the
foal, beautiful as it was, had put him to considerable trouble. It had
run away, and had almost got under the wheels of one of the wagons.

Hansei was very angry. Walpurga found it difficult to pacify him, and
at last she burst into tears and said:

"Sooner than move to our new home in anger and hatred, I'd rather we'd
all gone to the bottom in the boat."

"Yes, yes; I'm quiet; just try to be so, too," said Hansei, recovering
himself and looking toward the lake as if Black Esther's head were
again rising on the waves. He continued:

"But we must hurry on, or else it'll be pitch dark before we get there.
We've a good distance before us, and the horses have a heavy load. What
are you abo