"You are not generally superstitious; I hope, for your sake, you are not going to be so now. It was you who threw the writing and the plant to the wind, and called on the storm to visit us."
Annele made no answer. After another interval of silence Lenz arose, saying he would go on digging at the place where he had found his uncle, for if he could dig through to the mountain, he should be able to crawl out and summon help. Annele had her hand stretched out to detain him, imagining the horror of having him buried in the snow, and she and Petrovitsch too weak to dig him out. She had her hand stretched out to detain him, but passed it over her face instead, and let him go. He soon returned, however, and reported the snow to be so loose that every space filled in again as soon as cleared. There was reason to fear, also, that the snow still continued to fall. The best he could do was to shovel out again what he had been obliged to bring into the house, and push a clothes-press against the entrance, where the battered door no longer served as a protection.
His wet clothes had to be changed for his Sunday suit; it was no wedding garment he put on.
"Five years ago to-day," he murmured, "many sleighs stood before the door of the Lion inn; would that the guests were here now to dig us out!"
Petrovitsch had awaked from a short sleep, but still lay quiet in bed in the sleeping-room. He thought over with calmness all that had happened. Haste and complaints were here equally unavailing. Yesterday he had recalled his whole past life, had lived it over again in a few short moments, and here was the end. He accepted it with indifference. How to conduct himself towards those in the next room was the question that chiefly occupied him. At last he called Lenz and asked for his clothes, as he wished to get up. Lenz advised him to remain where he was, for the sitting-room was cold and his clothes wet, there being no way of lighting a fire. Petrovitsch, however, still desired to get up, and asked if there was no comfortable dressing-gown in the house.
"One of my father's," replied Lenz; "will you have that?"
"If there is no other, give me that," said Petrovitsch, angrily, while in his heart was a sorrow, almost a fear, at the thought of wearing what had been his brother's.
"You look quite like my father in it," cried Lenz; "quite like him, only a little smaller."
"I had a hard youth, or I should have been larger," said the old man, looking at himself in the glass, as he entered the room. The cry of the raven in the kitchen startled him; he imperatively ordered Lenz to kill the bird. Lenz's chief occupation, however, for the time was to keep the peace between Bubby and the cat. The dog betrayed his discomfort by continued barks and whines, till the cat was finally shut up in the kitchen, where she did them good service by silencing the raven. Petrovitsch called for more cherry-brandy, of which Lenz said there were happily three bottles left of his mother's making, at least twelve years ago; with hot water and sugar he mixed himself a nice glass of grog. "How absurd all this is!" he cried, growing talkative under its genial influence; "I have dragged my body over the whole world, only to be squeezed to death in my father's house. It serves me right; why could I not have conquered that foolish homesickness? Homesickness indeed!" he gave a laugh of derision and continued: "there is an insurance on my life, but of what use is that to me now? Do you know who has buried us here? that man of honor, the stout landlord, destroyed the forest over our heads."
"Alas! he buries his child and his child's child with us," added Lenz.