These thoughts were bitter and grievous. It turned out that this whole world of nobles was too rude for Hania. Unfortunately my mother had not been at home for a long time, and we men had hands that were too rough; we had crushed between them the delicate flower thrown among us by fate. Blame hung over our whole house, and this blame must be effaced with my blood or Selim's. I was ready for either event.
Meanwhile the light of day had begun to look in with increasing force through my window. I quenched the candles burning on the table; it was almost daylight. Half-past four struck clearly in the hall of the house.
"Well, it is time!" thought I; and, throwing a cloak over my shoulders to hide the weapons in case some one met me, I went out of the station.
While passing near the house, I noticed that the main door in the entrance, which was fastened at night usually by the jaws of an iron lion, was open. Evidently some one had gone out; hence I needed to take every precaution not to meet that person. Stealing along silently by the side of the front yard toward the linden-trees, I looked carefully on all sides, but it seemed to me as if everything round about were sleeping calmly. Only in the alley did I raise my head boldly, feeling sure that they would not see me now from the mansion. The morning was very clear and beautiful after yesterday's tempest. The sweet odor of wet lindens met me with great freshness in the alley. I turned on the left toward the forge, the mill, and the dam; that was the road to Vah's cottage. Sleep and weariness fled far away from me under the influence of the fresh morning and fine weather. I was full of a certain good hope; some internal forewarning told me that in that struggle which was to come, I should conquer. Selim used pistols like a master, but I was not inferior as a shot; in handling a sabre he surpassed me in skill, it is true, but to make up I was far stronger than he, to that degree stronger that he could hardly endure my strokes on his sabre. "And, moreover, come what may," thought I, "this is the end; and if it is not the solution, it will be the cutting of the Gordian knot which has bound me and stifled me so long. Besides, in good or bad faith, Selim has wrought great injustice on Hania, and he must atone for it."
Thus meditating, I reached the bank of the pond. Mist and steam had dropped from the air onto the water. Daylight had painted the blue surface of the pond with the colors of dawn. Early morning had only just begun. The air was growing more and more transparent; it was fresh everywhere, calm, rosy, quiet; only from the reeds came to my ears the quacking of wild ducks. I was near the sluices and bridge, when I stopped on a sudden, as if driven into the earth.
On the bridge stood my father, with his arms behind him and a quenched pipe in one hand. Leaning on the railing of the bridge, he was looking thoughtfully at the water and the morning dawn. It was evident that he as well as I had been unable to sleep, and he had gone out to breathe the morning air, or perhaps to look here and there at the management.
I did not see him at once, for I was walking at the side of the road, so the willows hid the railing of the bridge from me; but I was not more than ten yards away. I hid behind the willows, not knowing at the moment what to do.
But my father stood in the same place all the time. I looked at him. Sleeplessness and anxiety were apparent on his face. He cast his eyes at the pond and muttered the morning prayer.
To my ears came the words,—
"Hail, Mary, full of grace! The Lord be with Thee!" Here he whispered the continuation, and again aloud,—