“Oh! life is a lottery, a cruel lottery; for to everybody there is but one drawing, and the whole man is at stake.  Woe to the loser!”

After the expiration of some time, Fritz, under the influence of these meditations, had become melancholy, and all bright, smiling, and sure as life had recently appeared to him, so misty, uncertain, and painful it now appeared.  For the second time he stroked his forehead, shook these thoughts from him, seeking more practical ones, and for the second time it terminated in going to the window and gazing out.

A whirlwind filled the street, slamming gates and doors, shaking windows and carrying dust with it up to his attic chamber.  He was in the act of drawing back, when he saw a little piece of paper whirled in the dust cloud coming closely near him.  He shut his eyes to keep out the dust, grasping at random for the paper, which he caught.  At the same moment the whirlwind ceased, and the sky was again clear.  This appeared to him ominous; the scrap of paper had certainly a meaning to him, a meaning for him; the unknown whom he had not really spoken to, yet had been so exceedingly busy with, could not quite accidentally have thus conveyed this to his hands, and with throbbing heart he retired from the window to read the message.

One side of the paper was blank; in the left-hand corner of the other side was written “beloved,” and a little below it seemed as if there had been a signature, but now there was nothing left excepting the letters “geb.”

“‘Geb,’ what does that mean?” asked Fritz Bagger, with dark humor.  “If it had been gek, I could have understood it, although it were incorrectly written.  Geb, Gebrer, Algebra, Gebruderbuh,—­I am a big fool.”

“But it is no matter, she shall have an answer,” he shouted after a while, and seated himself to write a long, glowing love-letter.  When it was finished and read, he tore it in pieces.

“No,” said he, “if destiny has intended the least thing by acting to me as mail-carrier through the window, let me act reasonably.”  He wrote on a little piece of paper: 

“As the old Norwegians, when they went to Iceland, threw their high-seat pillars into the sea with the resolution to settle where they should go ashore, so I send this out.  My faith follows after; and it is my conviction that where this alights, I shall one day come, and salute you as my chosen, as my—.”  “Yes, now what more shall I add?” he asked himself.  “Ay, as my—­’geb’—!” he added, with an outburst of merry humor, that just completed the whole sentimental outburst.  He went to the window and threw the paper out; it alighted with a slow quivering.  He was already afraid that it would go directly down into the ditch; but then a breeze came lifting it almost up to himself again, then a new current carried it away, lifting it higher and higher, whirling it, till at last it disappeared from his sight in continual ascension, so he thought.