“She will go,” sobbed Frau Lerch.  “The servants must still obey you.  At least order the litter.  This crazy night pilgrimage can not remain concealed.”

“Then let people talk about it,” replied Barbara firmly and, after having the cloak clasped and the hood drawn over her head, she went out.  Frau 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 woodyard on her left, when she constantly imagined that she heard another step following hers like an audible shadow, when drunken raftsmen came toward her, hoarsely singing an obscene song, she pressed against a fence in order not to be seen by the dissolute fellows.  But now a light came wavering toward her, looking like a shining bird flying slowly, or a hell-hound, with glowing eyes, and at the sight it seemed to her impossible to wander on all alone.  But the mysterious light proved to be only a lantern in the hand of an old woman who had been to fetch a doctor, so she summoned up fresh courage, though she told herself that here near the lumber yards she might easily encounter raftsmen and guards watching the logs and planks piled on the banks of the river, fishermen, and sailors.  Already she heard the rushing of the swollen Danube, and horrible tales returned to her memory of hapless girls who had flung themselves into the waves here to put an end to lives clouded by disgrace and fear.