Lerch, who had the key, opened the door for her amid loud lamentations
and muttered curses; but when the girl had vanished in the darkness, she
turned back, saying fiercely through her set teeth: "Rush on to ruin, you
headstrong creature! If I see aright, the magnificence here is already
tottering. Go and get wet! I've made my profit, and the two unfinished
gowns can be added to the account. The Lord is my witness that I meant
well. But will she ever do what sensible people advise? Always running
her head against the wall. Whoever will not hear, must feel."

She hastened back into the house as she spoke to escape the pouring rain,
but Barbara paid little heed to the wet, and waded on through the mire of
the road.

The force of the storm was broken, the wind had subsided, distant flashes
of lightning still illumined the northern horizon, and the night air was
stiflingly sultry. No one appeared in the road, and yet some belated
pedestrian might run against her at any moment, for the dense darkness
shrouded even the nearest objects. But she knew the way, and had
determined to follow the Danube and go along the woodlands to the
tanner's pit, whence the Hiltner house was easily reached. In this way
she could pass around the gate, which otherwise she would have been
obliged to have opened.

But ere gaining the river she was to learn that she had undertaken a more
difficult task than she expected. Her father had never allowed her to go
out after dark, unaccompanied, even in the neighbourhood, and the terrors
of night show their most hideous faces to those who are burdened by
anxious cares. Several times she sank so deep into the mud that her shoe
stuck fast in it, and she was obliged to force it on again with much
difficulty. As she walked on and a strange, noise reached her from the