Then he could no longer doubt that the brothers avoided him on purpose. “They are ashamed to look me in the face,” he said to himself; “I will write to them.”
But when he took up his pen to compel himself to write friendly words of reconciliation, such disgust at his own undignified deed overcame him that he crushed it to pieces on the table, and paced about the room, moaning aloud.
“I must first go and collect my strength,” he said, and crept noiselessly to the girls’ room. They sat at the window, spoke not a word, and stared with white faces into the distance; then one let her head sink against the other’s shoulder, and said, gently and sadly,
“They will not come any more.”
“They are afraid of him,” sighed the sister.
And then they relapsed again into silence.
“Ah!” he said, breathing heavily, while he crept back to his room, “I knew that would help me.”
Then he took a clean sheet of paper and wrote a beautiful letter, in which he expounded to the brothers that he was no longer angry with them—that he would forgive them everything if they would restore the lost honor to his sisters.
“To-morrow they will be here,” he said, with a sigh of relief, when he dropped the letter into the box. For the rest of the day he wandered about on the heath, for he did not dare to look any one in the face, so much was he ashamed-of himself.
But the Erdmanns did not come.