the narrow houses with a silvery lustre. The rapid tramp of the soldiers
was echoed loudly back from the houses through the silence of the night,
and the vibration of the air, shaken by the beating of the drums, made
the panes rattle.

This time no merry children with paper flags and wooden swords preceded
the warriors, this time no gay girls and proud mothers followed them, not
even an old man, who remembered former days, when he himself bore arms.
As the silent troops reached the neighborhood of Allertssohn's house, the
clock in the church-steeple slowly struck twelve, and directly after the
alarm-bell began to sound from the tower of Pancratius.

A window in the second story of the fencing-toaster's house was thrown
open, and his wife's face appeared. An anxious married life with her
strange husband had prematurely aged pretty little Eva's countenance,
but the mild moonlight transfigured her faded features. The beat of her
husband's drums was familiar to her, and when she saw him at midnight
marching past to the horrible call of the alarm-bell, a terrible dread
overpowered her and would scarcely allow her to call: "Husband, husband!
What is the matter, Andreas?"

He did not hear, for the roll of the drums, the tramp of the soldiers'
feet on the pavement and the ringing of the alarm-bell drowned her voice;
but he saw her distinctly, and a strange feeling stole over him. Her
face, framed in a white kerchief and illumined by the moonlight, seemed
to him fairer than he had ever seen it since the days of his wooing, and
he felt so youthful and full of chivalrous daring, on his way to the
field of danger, that he drew himself up to his full height and marched
by, keeping most perfect time to the beat of the drums, as in lover-like
fashion he threw her a kiss with his left hand, while waving his sword in