While the men had almost entirely recovered the awful hours when they had been momentarily exposed to destruction, Annele seemed to herself to have risen from the dead; she was now mild and gentle, and every hasty word went to her heart, so that Franzl often lamented to Pilgrim, and said, "I fear Annele will not live long, there is something so holy and unearthly in her look."
The escape of the inhabitants of the house on the Morgenhalde, was the cause of an event passing almost unperceived, that would otherwise have been a source of much talk and discussion.
On the second day after Lenz's rescue, the body of a man was found in a wooded ravine near Knuslingen, buried under the snow frozen. It was that of Pröbler. No one regretted his fate so much as Lenz, for he could not help thinking that it was his voice he had heard calling him, the night he left him; and he suspected something more in the death of the miserable old man than other people imagined, but he kept these thoughts to himself.
Annele prospered in Petrowitsch's large house, and was soon as fresh and blooming as ever.
They remained till late in the summer with their old uncle, till their own house was repaired and restored. Petrowitsch was not unfrequently rather crabbed. It made him very angry to see little Wilhelm jump on chairs and sofas, where Büble, however, might stretch himself at his ease.
Petrowitsch could not get rid of a bad cough he had got, from being buried in the snow. The physician advised him to visit some baths, but he refused to go. He did not say so, but he thought, if he was to die, he would rather die at home, and then all longing for home would be at an end. He often went with little Wilhelm to the Spannreute, the hill behind the house, where a vast number of well-grown larches had been planted to shelter the house, and deep trenches dug.
One day he said harshly to the boy: "Wilhelm, you are just like Büble; you can't go on the straight path, you are not content with that. You are only happy when rushing about, and jumping over hedges and ditches; that's your grand pleasure! Yes, Büble, you are just as bad; you two are capital playfellows!"
Then little Wilhelm replied: "Uncle, a dog is not a man, and a man is not a dog."
This simple speech of the child softened the old man's heart so much, that he begged Lenz, when he again took possession of his own house, to leave little Wilhelm with him.
It was Annele who chiefly urged a speedy return to their home on the Morgenhalde. Once she would have considered it Paradise to live in Petrowitsch's house, to be kind to the old man while he lived, and to inherit his wealth when he died; but now her sole wish was to pass the rest of her days, peacefully and frugally, in their solitary home.