Tales from the German. Volume I.

by C. F. van der Velde

While saying this he seized Megret's hand and gave him a piercing glance. The latter angrily tore himself from his grasp.

'You know our former agreement,' said he moodily, 'never to allude to bye-gone occurrences, even in our most secret conversations.'

'You are right,' said Siquier, with a look and tone of horror. 'The past is, for us, a black night, full of blood and flames! Let us wait until it re-appear in eternal futurity!'

'Here is money,' said Megret, placing a heavy purse of gold in his hand. 'Go and prosper.'

'It contains more than thirty pieces of silver,' said Siquier, weighing the purse in a sort of mental abstraction. 'There is more than enough to purchase a potter's field for a wanderer's grave!'

'The fever has weakened you, poor Siquier!' exclaimed Megret, with forced laughter. 'You have grown learned in the scriptures, and will no doubt become one of the professing brothers of La Trappe, in your old age. Do hasten to get there.'

'Mock me not, seducer!' said Siquier, grating his teeth and grasping the hilt of his sword. After a few moments he observed, 'you are right! I believe in a hereafter,--I believe in future rewards and punishments, and may I therefore live to repent and reform. You entertain a different belief, and you have only to shoot yourself when your conscience awakens from its death-sleep!'

'That may become advisable!' said Megret, in a low tone, and both remained sitting near each other, their arms resting on their knees, and their faces buried in their hands. They remained silent, each absorbed in his own reflections, while the thickly falling flakes of snow gradually wrapped them in white mantles, without attracting notice.

At length a heavy sigh escaped from Siquier's laboring breast. He rose up, threw the purse of gold before Megret's feet, and suddenly left the garden, without bidding him farewell. Megret, uttering no word, remained sitting in the same posture, and Arwed was detained motionless for some time, by the feelings which this singular and dreadful disclosure awakened, and by a want of decision, which of the two first to call to account for their hidden deed of horror. He finally concluded: 'why should I contend with the miserable man, whom the judgment of God has already stricken, whose marrow has been already consumed by sickness and remorse, who has neither strength nor courage to oppose me, and who, perhaps, would welcome death from my hand? No, the insolent transgressor, in all the pride and bloom of life, shall be the object of my wrath--the seducer! as his accomplice called him. I will punish not the knife, but the hand!'--and he quickly approached the entrance to the grove, which Megret was that moment leaving.

The latter shrunk before the indignant glance of the youth. The flush of anger and the paleness of terror alternately played upon his countenance, and it was dreadful to see the two manly forms confronting each other with looks of enmity and defiance.