CHAPTER XV.

The next morning at five o'clock the inmates of Gnadeck were awakened by a discharge of artillery. "Aha!" said Ferber to his wife, "the celebration is beginning." But Elizabeth was startled from a fearful dream, in which the misfortune which she had yesterday averted seemed actually to take place. She had just seen Herr von Walde fall dying to the ground, when the cannon in the valley awoke her. It was some time before she could collect herself. For one moment she suffered fearfully. It seemed as if heaven and earth were vanishing from her as that noble figure fell; and even now, when she saw the golden light of morning falling upon the familiar objects in her room and not upon the blood-stained sward, her agitated nerves still quivered; she had never, not even the day before, when she had so fearlessly risked her life for his, felt so deeply that his death would be hers also.

Again and again the cannon thundered up from the valley. The window-panes shook slightly, and the little canary fluttered in terror from side to side in his cage. At each report Elizabeth shuddered; and when her anxious mother, who could not quite allay her fears for the result of the previous day's occurrence, although her child had seemed unharmed and well, came to her bedside to ask how she had slept, the girl threw her arms around her neck and burst into an uncontrollable fit of tears.

"Good heavens, my child!" cried Frau Ferber, much frightened, "you are