Suddenly he turned pale and had to hand the reins over to Peter Schmidt.  In the jingling of the sleigh-bells his ear caught something like the insistent hammering ring of electric bells.  It was an illusion of his hearing, but it filled him with rising horror, and a shiver went through his whole body.  By the time Peter Schmidt, who instantly observed the change in his friend, had brought the horse to a stop, Frederick had already mastered his nervous attack.  He did not admit it was the sinking of the Roland that had unexpectedly announced its presence again.  He merely said that the noise of the bells had irritated his nerves beyond endurance.  Fortunately, the spotless expanse of Lake Hanover was already close by and the little house on the other shore already visible.  So the two men descended from the sleigh.  Peter Schmidt, in silence, removed the bells from the harness and hitched the horse to the branch of a bare tree.  They crossed the frozen lake on foot, making for the solitary house under its heavy covering of snow.

Peter ascended the front door steps, which resembled great bolsters of snow, and opened the door.

“To judge by the way it looks now, the house is scarcely habitable in winter.”

“Oh, yes it is,” Frederick declared.

Having been built for summer use only, it had no cellar.  On the ground floor there was a little kitchen and two other rooms; in the attic a bedroom as large as the two down-stairs rooms together.  In the attic room Frederick immediately decided to build his nest for an indeterminate length of time.  He scouted Peter’s considerations in regard to household service.

“I feel,” he declared, “as if this house had been waiting for me, and I for the house.”

XXV

The very next day he took up his abode in his lonely refuge on Lake Hanover, which he alternately dubbed his Diogenes tub, his Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and his retort.  It was no Diogenes tub, because the two friends brought wood and anthracite coal for a little American stove in the bedroom, which gave quite a good deal of heat and made a cosey appearance with the glow of the burning coal visible; and because the kitchen and pantry contained everything that is necessary for life, and a little more.  Frederick refused to have anybody share his quarters with him or help with the housework.  As he said, he wanted to settle his accounts and take his trial balance, and the presence of another person might be disturbing to that process.

After Peter Schmidt disappeared in the distance and the sound of the sleigh-bells had died away and Frederick felt he was quite alone in that wide American landscape wrapped in the night’s darkness, it was a supreme moment for him.  He returned into the house, closed the door and listened.  He heard the crackling of the wood in the small kitchen stove.  Taking the candle that had been left standing on one of the lower steps in the hall, he went up-stairs, where the warmth and the dusky glow of his little American stove rejoiced him.  He lit a lamp, and after arranging his toilet articles on an unusually long, bare dresser, he settled himself beside the lamp in a comfortable bamboo chair.  He was filled with a mysterious sense of rich, deep delight.