to the ground.  The crowd drew asunder on all sides with a cry of horror.  In the tumult and confusion, the bearers were obliged to set down the coffin; the girl lay close by it; it seemed as if every limb was broken.  They lifted her up, and by accident or providentially she was allowed to lean over the body; she appeared, indeed, to be endeavoring, with what remained to her of life, to reach her beloved mistress.  Scarcely, however, had the loosely hanging limbs touched Ottilie’s robe, and the powerless finger rested on the folded hands, than the girl started up, and first raising her arms and eyes toward heaven, flung herself down upon her knees before the coffin, and gazed with passionate devotion at her mistress.

At last she sprang, as if inspired, from off the ground, and cried with a voice of ecstasy:  “Yes, she has forgiven me; what no man, what I myself could never have forgiven.  God forgives me through her look, her motion, her lips.

“Now she is lying again so still and quiet, but you saw how she raised herself up, and unfolded her hands and blessed me, and how kindly she looked at me.  You all heard, you can witness that she said to me:  ’You are forgiven.’  I am not a murderess any more.  She has forgiven me.  God has forgiven me, and no one may now say anything more against me.”

The people stood crowding around her.  They were amazed; they listened and looked this way and that, and no one knew what should next be done.  “Bear her on to her rest,” said the girl.  “She has done her part; she has suffered, and cannot now remain any more amongst us.”  The bier moved on, Nanny now following it; and thus they reached the church and the chapel.

So now stood the coffin of Ottilie, with the child’s coffin at her head, and her box at her feet, inclosed in a resting-place of massive oak.  A woman had been provided to watch the body for the first part of the time, as it lay there so beautiful beneath its glass covering.  But Nanny would not permit this duty to be taken from herself.  She would remain alone without a companion, and attend to the lamp which was now kindled for the first time; and she begged to be allowed to do it with so much eagerness and perseverance, that they let her have her way, to prevent any greater evil that might ensue.

But she did not long remain alone.  As night was falling, and the hanging lamp began to exercise its full right and shed abroad a larger lustre, the door opened and the Architect entered the chapel.  The chastely ornamented walls in the mild light looked more strange, more awful, more antique, than he was prepared to see them.  Nanny was sitting on one side of the coffin.  She recognized him immediately; but she pointed in silence to the pale form of her mistress.  And there stood he on the other side, in the vigor of youth and of grace, with his arms drooping, and his hands clasped piteously together, motionless, with head and eye inclined over the inanimate body.