"If you have finished your breakfast, you must take some rest," said Leonhardt. "My wife has arranged a bed for you."
"I accept your kindness gratefully," replied Johannes, "for I am exhausted, and have a fatiguing day before me."
"Then let me show you to your room. That service even a blind man can render you," said the old man with a smile.
And the two ascended to the upper story, where Herr Leonhardt opened a door and showed his guest into a scrupulously neat little apartment, containing a most inviting bed. Then he groped about, assuring himself that all was as it should be, and returned to the room below, saying, as he closed the door, "Take a good sleep,--you may need the strength it will give you."
"Thanks, a thousand thanks, Father Leonhardt!" Johannes cried after him, and he listened to the careful tread of his kind host upon the narrow stairway. Then his eyes closed. Frau Brigitta's words sounded in his ears, "If the Fräulein had known that you were walking up and down beneath her windows in the cold night----"
She must have known it. He had told her plainly enough that he should do so, and she had not even opened a window or looked out at him. But stay,--stay! She would come out to him herself. See! see! The gate opened softly. Was her uncle with her? No! She was alone,--quite alone! "Come," she whispered, "you are cold. Come in." And she took his hands and breathed upon them and rubbed them. "Will you not come into the house?" she asked. "There you can watch for my uncle and be out of the rain, and I will stay with you and never, never leave you."
"Ernestine," cried Johannes, stretching out his arms to embrace her. The sudden motion awoke him, and he found himself alone. He could not have slept more than a quarter of an hour, and yet he could not go to sleep again. He lay quietly resting for a time, and then arose, prepared to go through with the decisive day that awaited him.
Evening had come. As on the previous day, Ernestine was sitting at her writing-table, but it was empty now. Its contents were packed up in the chests which were standing in the room, locked and ready for the voyage. Ernestine sat idly, with her hands in her lap, listening to her uncle's directions to the weeping housekeeper in reference to the price at which she was to dispose of the furniture of the house.
"The scientific works and the apparatus I shall leave to Walter Leonhardt," she said.
"What!" cried Leuthold. "Are you going to give away at least a thousand thalers?" He paused, with a glance at Frau Willmers, who had the tact to leave the room. "Why throw money out of the window, now that we are beggared?"