Stealthily I crept out of my hiding-place and proceeded to where it seemed I had seen the witch, but as I came near I saw naught, and yet as I walked slowly away there came faintly to mine ears as though receding from me, that horrible, cackling laugh I had reason to hold in so much dread.
CHAPTER XX
SISTER GENOVEVA IS GONE
O thou whose glory fills the etherial throne,
And all ye deathless powers, protect my son!
—Iliad.
Twilight was fast deepening into night when I returned to my Kammer in the large Brother House, or Bethania, which we built a few years after the departure of the Eckerlings, down in the meadow, nigh the Cocalico, and facing the Sister House, or Saron, Brother Beissel's cabin sitting circumspectly between the two houses of our Order.
Here, as in Zion, Sonnlein and I had adjoining cells. I was not greatly surprised as I entered mine, to hear him whistle softly a worldly tune, though where he had caught it I knew not—surely not from me—for our sober lives never favored such godless puckerings and twistings of the lips!
Then he hummed the blasphemous thing for a while, changing into whistling again, and in his humming and whistlings making such vain and perverse changes, flying from high to low, from loud to soft, mingling with it all such sundry quiverings and queer little runs and trillings, until not able to stand it longer—for it seemed he would never stop—I marched sternly to the doorway of his cell, flung back the light door and spake to him, "Art crazy or in love?"
"Both, Vaterchen, both!" he fairly shouted, as he grabbed me ere I knew what was up, and spun me around so I could hardly keep my feet.