ever have consented to become the wife of a man who was poor? "Handsome but poor! What an anomaly!" she said in an undertone, smiling sarcastically.

With bitter envy and scorn in her painfully contracted heart, she saw the rich but most ugly looking women rolling by in their elegant automobiles disdainfully glancing at her and her poor outfit. Often enough when she was working,—engaged in the performance of her household duties in the two small dark rooms of a tenement house, without pure air, without light to brighten her beautiful face, she cursed everything. This hovel her home! And she had the priceless gift of beauty! She made up her mind not to stand it any longer.

The day came when she was seized by such a consuming desire to go in pursuit of pleasure, to wear elegant, stylish clothes and feel the admiring glances of the other sex resting upon her, that meeting Mr. Ogden by accident and dazzled by his wealth, captivated by his costly presents, she accepted his proposal to go with him forgetting everything, even the sacred duty of a mother.

III.

The much-admired little boat was now approaching the narrow bay which is only two minutes distance from Gmunden. There stood the spick and span victoria of Mr. Ogden; the two black horses attached to it struck out sparks of fire with their impatient hoofs. The tall Englishman who had distanced her, stood there waiting. The moment he caught sight of her bewitching face, his eyes sparkled and smiling sweetly at her, helped her tenderly out of the boat.

The sun had just gone down behind a fleecy cloud and kindled a volcano, from whose silver-rimmed crater fiery rays of scarlet shot up almost to the clear zenith. She looked fatigued and closed her eyes for a moment. Now she caught sight of him and smiled, allowing him to take her away—

Tenderly kissing her hand, he led her to the carriage, lifted her carefully in and wrapped a costly cloak, which was laying there, around the enchanting form he so adored.

She did not speak, but sat by his side in silence. He gazed at her several times and then gave the order to start. The carriage set off at a rapid gait.

The light of day was rapidly failing. Day and night seemed to join hands in a twilight mystery; black clouds were now piling up threateningly on the western horizon. A heavy gust scattered the thick aggressive atmosphere. Flying leaves were lifted up in the air as if by magic, and went through the wildest dances to the piping and howling of the storm, which now commenced to rage in all its fury, while voices of sinister shadows in the air, seemed to hold intercourse with others in the distance.

In these high mountainous regions a few moments suffice to turn a smiling landscape into a cheerless dripping desert. Claps of thunder and flashes of lightning followed each other at brief intervals. The rain now fell in torrents and the howling storm whipped the green lake whose wavelets had been so gently splashing half an hour ago.

IV.

During the events described in the preceding chapter, a man still in the glow of youth was walking through the valley surrounded by lofty saline cliffs, in this howling storm, while clouds of shrivelled leaves danced above his head. He did not mind the dreary desolation around him.

His face, naturally strong with manly beauty, was now pale and haggard, showing unmistakable traces of a great sorrow. His large intelligent eyes were now sunk deep in their sockets. A nervous restlessness made him shiver, and his pale cheeks gathered only a little color when an obstinate cough threatened to rend his suffering breast asunder.

His coat betrayed the elegant cut of the fashionable tailor, but it was now old and worn, and hung loosely about his emaciated form. He looked like a teacher on whom fortune had persistently turned her back.

He carried in his hands a thick book, carefully wrapped up in a handkerchief, which he clasped tightly almost tenderly to his breast, as if afraid at any moment it might escape or drop out of his hands. This idea made him tremble. It was indeed his only source of income; by the aid of this valuable book he had already earned many a gold piece in the Tyrolian and Styrian mountains.

His humorous lectures had been received with great approbation in different hotels frequented by many foreign tourists. And still, his earnings were not sufficient to support him and his motherless child, pretty little Marie, whom he had left in the meantime with a family of friends in Dresden. Every silver groschen he had earned was for the support of his child.

He had come all the way from Hallstadt, and this long walk had exhausted his strength considerably; and his heart was sick and heavy. Now he felt a frightful nervousness, fearing not to be able to reach in time the hotel where he was announced to deliver his humorous lecture.

He walked as quickly as he could to the farther end of the valley, where he expected to see a clearing in the forest, and an open road to the hotel. But on all sides he met high, unfamiliar cliffs. Apprehension fell over him like an icy rain.

"Can I have lost my way?" he murmured, breathing heavily, while great beads of perspiration broke out on his forehead.

In an hour's time he was supposed to be at the Mountain View Hotel, and now.... He looked helplessly around. Darkness began to fall, contesting every inch of ground with retreating daylight. His teeth were chattering with a cold chill, when he set out to find another opening.

The continuous excitement of this wandering from one hotel to another, the consuming sorrow, the bleeding wound in his heart, had gradually undermined his constitution, originally none too strong, and now this wearing cough, the insidious fever!... "How upset I feel; it's the peculiar atmosphere," he said to himself. At the same time he remembered that the entertainment he proposed to offer this evening, was not sufficiently furnished with witty epigrams and bons mots. So, bowing and smiling to an imaginary audience of cosmopolitan taste, he began to rehearse his lecture as he walked on, sharpening the humour and adding some popular Austrian witticisms in vogue as trump cards.

Suddenly he looked up and saw a dark cloud threatening down upon him. Heavy gusts of wind commenced to bend the tops of the high, impenetrable trees. The songs of the mocking birds rang from the cedars in the distance in his ear and startled him.

He stopped in alarm and looked distractedly around him. Where was he? He could not make out. In the marshy places the fireflies were seen, wandering about and looking in the distance like malicious eyes of wicked sprites.

There was no longer any doubt, he had taken an entirely wrong direction.

Trembling with excitement, fearing delay, he rushed back to look for the right path, while his hot breath grated audibly on his weak lungs. A fearful storm was gathering, whispering and sobbing like complaining, frightened witches now whirling the leaves into the air vehemently as if driven by the furies of Hades.

A cold shudder ran through his fevered frame. He gazed in helpless despair up and down, not knowing where to turn, while the rain poured down in torrents, soaking him from head to foot, and the centuries old tree-tops groaned and moaned like lost souls in Dante's Inferno. Now everything began to swim around him. Nature was in an uproar and bluster. Every little glowworm seemed to his frightened