The view was enchanting.  The opposite shore gleamed silvery blue in the delicate white light of a northern spring day.  In the distance, the masses of houses and the spires of Hamburg hung upon the horizon like a faintly tinted, half-washed out transparency.  A light breeze ruffled the broad bosom of the Alster, and the red and green steamboats plowed dark furrows in its brightness, which remained there long after the boats had passed, and faded away finally in many a serpentine curve.  Numbers of little rowing and sailing-boats floated upon the slow current, peopled by couples and parties in their Sunday clothes, their talk and merry laughter sounding across the water to the shore.  A sailing-boat passed quite close to the terrace on its way to the Fahrhaus.  A young boatman handled the sails, a little boy was steering, and in the stern sat a young man and a pretty rosy girl, their arms affectionately intertwined, softly singing, “Life let us cherish.”  Malvine smiled as she caught sight of the little idyll, and turning to Wilhelm, who was gazing dreamily into the quiet sunny beauty of the surrounding scene:  “Can you imagine any more delightful occupation on a spring day like this,” she said, “than to go love-making like those two little people over there?”

A shadow passed over Wilhelm’s face.  He saw himself lying in the high grass under a wide-spreading tree in St. Valery, and over him there hovered a white hand that strewed him with fresh blossoms.

At that instant they heard a little frightened cry, followed immediately by a second one, and then a gurgle.  Both sprang to their feet, and Malvine uttered a piercing shriek of terror.  Right in front of them, not more than a step from the terrace, they saw Willy in the midst of a whirl of foam which he had churned up round him with his desperate, struggling little limbs.  His arms were tossing wildly above the water, but the head with its floating golden curls dipped under from time to time, and the little distorted mouth opened for an agonized breath and scream, only to be stopped by the in-rushing water.  The boat rocking violently close by explained with sufficient clearness how the accident had happened.  The boy had clambered on to the edge of the boat to rock himself, had overbalanced and fallen into the water, and in his struggles had already drifted some paces from the shore.  Fido stood barking and gasping on the step and dipping his paws into the water only to draw them out again.

Malvine stretched out her arms to the child, but her feet refused their office, she stood rooted to the spot, unable to do anything but utter terrible inarticulate screams.  Only a few seconds elapsed--just long enough to realize what had happened—­when Wilhelm sprang with lightning rapidity on to his chair, and from thence, with one bound, over the parapet into the water.  He disappeared below the surface, but rose again at once just beside the child, who clung to him with all his remaining strength.  How he