affairs are too small for him, and his eye does not count the grains of dust, but looks upward, and has a share in the infinitude stretching before us.  Jesus Christ was gentle as a child and loved children, he was the Son of God, yet voluntarily yielded himself into the hands of men.  The greatest of great men did not belong to the ranks of the clever.  Blessed are the meek, He said.  I understand those words.  He is meek, whose soul is open, clear and pure as a mirror, and the greatest philosophers, the noblest minds I have met in life and history were also meek.  The brute is clever; wisdom is the cleverness of the noble-minded.  We must all follow the Saviour, and he among us, who unites wisdom to meekness, will come nearest to the Redeemer.”

CHAPTER IX.

Marx had gone out to reconnoitre in a more cheerful mood, for the doctor had made good the loss sustained in the death of his old nag, and he returned at noon with good news.

A wood-carrier, whom he met on the high-road, had told him where Jorg, the charcoal-burner, lived.

The fugitives could reach his hut before night, and in so doing approach nearer the Rhine valley.  Everything was ready for departure, but old Rahel objected to travelling further.  She was sitting on a stone before the hut, for the smoke in the narrow room oppressed her breathing, and it seemed as if terror had robbed her of her senses.  Gazing into vacancy with wild eyes and chattering teeth, she tried to make cakes and mould dumplings out of the snow, which she probably took for flour.  She neither heard the doctor’s call nor saw his wife beckon, and when the former grasped her to compel her to rise, uttered a loud shriek.  At last the smith succeeded in persuading her to sit down on the sledge, and the party moved forward.

Adam had harnessed himself to the front of the vehicle.  Marx went to and fro, pushing when necessary.  The dumb woman waded through the snow by her husband’s side.  “Poor wife!” he said once; but she pressed his arm closer, looking up into his eyes as if she wished to say:  “Surely I shall lack nothing, if only you are spared to me!”

She enjoyed his presence as if it were a favor granted by destiny, but only at chance moments, for she could not banish her fear for him, and of the pursuers—­her dread of uncertainty and wandering.

If snow rattled from a pine-tree, if she noticed Lopez turn his head, or if old Rahel uttered a moan, she shuddered; and this was not unperceived by her husband, who told himself that she had every reason to look forward to the next few hours with grave anxiety.  Each moment might bring imprisonment to him and all, and if they discovered—­if it were disclosed who he, who Elizabeth was. . . .

Ulrich and Ruth brought up the rear, saying little to each other.

At first the path ascended again, then led down to the valley.  It had stopped snowing long before, and the farther they went the lighter the drifts became.