“Leave go!” he screamed.
“You come into the house with me.”
“Oh no; rather not,” said the elder one.
“I don’t know at all what you want with us,” said the younger one, who, under the iron grasp of Paul’s fist, was not a little frightened. “We love your sisters; we have nothing to do with you.”
“And if you love them, don’t you know where the door is, through which you might have come to woo them? Robbers that you are!”
At this moment Ulrich had torn his brother from Paul’s grasp; and before he could collect his senses they both flew in hot haste through the garden, leaped the fence, and disappeared in the darkness of the heath.
Completely stunned, he turned round and saw his sisters crouching behind the trunk of a tree.
“Come!” he said, pointing towards the house, and, sobbing, they followed him.
When they wanted to slip away to their own room, he said, opening the door of the parlor, “In here.” Trembling, they crouched down in a corner, for they did not know what punishment he would inflict upon them.
He lit the candle himself, took up the family album and took out a picture.