"Thank God for that. What brought you here?"
"I am among the miners, Johannes, and the factory operatives. They need me."
"Oh, my Brother! I too need you. I do not know where in the world to go ... and Pan is dead!"
Johannes embraced the right arm of Markus, and rested his head against his Brother's shoulder. Thus sitting, he was a long time silent.
He gazed at the clouded valley with its colossal mine-wheel, the black chimneys and ovens, the black, yellow, and blue-white wreaths of vapor, the great iron sheds, and the many-windowed buildings devoid of ornament and color.
All about him he could see the sides of the mountains severed as by great, gaping wounds; the trees prostrate; all nature, with its beautiful verdure, burned to cinders; and the rocks cleft and crushed. Upon the top of the mountain, at the very edge of the chasm—an excavation resembling the hole made by fruit-devouring wasps—several pine-trees were still standing. But these last children of the forest were also soon to fall. And in the distance the echo of explosions reverberated through the mountains, followed by the loud sounds of falling stones, as the rocks were shattered with dynamite.
"Pan is dead!" His beautiful wonderland was being destroyed; and in the new life which was to be founded upon the ruins of the old one, Johannes knew not where to go. He was frightened and bewildered.
But had he not found his Brother again, and for the second time beheld him in a glorified form, clothed in shining raiment? And was he not, even now, in his warm, comforting presence?
The thought of this composed and strengthened Johannes.
"My Brother," he asked, "who killed Pan?"