which to Lottchen appeared madness, and to Louisa herself the act of a sibyl instinct with blind inspiration.  “Here,” said she, “is our dancing room.  When shall we all meet and dance again together?” Saying which, she commenced a wild dance, whirling her candle round her head until the motion extinguished it; then, eddying round her sister in narrowing circles, she seized Lottchen’s candle also, blew it out, and then interrupted her own singing to attempt a laugh.  But the laugh was hysterical.  The darkness, however, favored her; and, seizing her sister’s arm, she forced her along, whispering, “Come, come, come!” Lottchen could not be so dull as entirely to misunderstand her.  She suffered herself to be led up the first flight of stairs, at the head of which was a room looking into the street.  In this they would have gained an asylum, for the door had a strong bolt.  But, as they were on the last steps of the landing, they could hear the hard breathing and long strides of the murderer ascending behind them.  He had watched them through a crevice, and had been satisfied by the hysterical laugh of Louisa that she had seen him.  In the darkness he could not follow fast, from ignorance of the localities, until he found himself upon the stairs.  Louisa, dragging her sister along, felt strong as with the strength of lunacy, but Lottchen hung like a weight of lead upon her.  She rushed into the room, but at the very entrance Lottchen fell.  At that moment the assassin exchanged his stealthy pace for a loud clattering ascent.  Already he was on the topmost stair; already he was throwing himself at a bound against the door, when Louisa, having dragged her sister into the room, closed the door and sent the bolt home in the very instant that the murderer’s hand came into contact with the handle.  Then, from the violence of her emotions, she fell down in a fit, with her arm around the sister whom she had saved.

How long they lay in this state neither ever knew.  The two old ladies had rushed upstairs on hearing the tumult.  Other persons had been concealed in other parts of the house.  The servants found themselves suddenly locked in, and were not sorry to be saved from a collision which involved so awful a danger.  The old ladies had rushed, side by side, into the very center of those who were seeking them.  Retreat was impossible; two persons at least were heard following them upstairs.  Something like a shrieking expostulation and counter-expostulation went on between the ladies and the murderers; then came louder voices—­then one heart-piercing shriek, and then another—­and then a slow moaning and a dead silence.  Shortly afterwards was heard the first crashing of the door inward by the mob; but the murderers had fled upon the first alarm, and, to the astonishment of the servants, had fled upward.  Examination, however, explained this:  from a window in the roof they had passed to an adjoining house recently left empty; and here, as in other cases, we had proof how apt people are, in the midst of elaborate provisions against remote dangers, to neglect those which are obvious.