"Can you undertake, Regina," he asked the next evening, "to deliver this letter unseen to the Fräulein at the parsonage?"
She regarded him for a second with wide eyes, then looking down, she murmured, "Yes, Herr."
"But supposing they attack you down in the village?"
"Pah! What do I care for them?" she exclaimed, shrugging her shoulders contemptuously, as she always did when the villagers were in question.
Soon afterwards he saw her glide by the window like a shadow and disappear in the gloaming.
Hours passed. She did not return. He began to reproach himself for having engaged her in his amatory mission when her life was at stake.
At last, towards midnight, he heard the front door latch click.
She appeared on the threshold with chattering teeth, blue with cold, the letter still grasped in her cramped fingers.
He made her sit down by the stove, and gave her Spanish wine to drink--and gradually she found her voice.
"I have been lying all this time in the snow under the parsonage hedge," she said, "but there was no possibility of getting at her. Just now she put the light out in her bedroom, so I came home. But don't be vexed, Herr. Perhaps I shall have better luck to-morrow."