every lineament. I cannot call them handsome – they were too pale and grave for the word; as they each bent over a book, they looked thoughtful almost to severity. A stand between them supported a second candle and two great volumes, to which they frequently referred, comparing them, seemingly, with the smaller books they held in their hands, like people consulting a dictionary to aid them in the task of translation. This scene was as silent as if all the figures had been shadows and the firelit apartment a picture: so hushed was it, I could hear the cinders fall from the grate, the clock tick in its obscure corner; and I even fancied I could distinguish the click-click of the woman’s knitting-needles. When, therefore, a voice broke the strange stillness at last, it was audible enough to me.
‘Listen, Diana,’ said one of the absorbed students; ‘Franz and old Daniel are together in the night-time, and Franz is telling a dream from which he has awakened in terror – listen!’ And in a low voice she read something, of which not one word was intelligible to me; for it was in an unknown tongue – neither French nor Latin. Whether it were Greek or German I could not tell.
‘That is strong,’ she said, when she had finished: ‘I relish it.’ The other girl, who had lifted her head to listen to her sister, repeated, while she gazed at the fire, a line of what had been read. At a later day, I knew the language and the book; therefore, I will here quote the line: though, when I first heard it, it was only like a stroke on sounding brass to me – conveying no meaning –
‘“Da trat hervor Einer, anzusehen wie die Sternen Nacht.” Good! good!’ she exclaimed, while her dark and deep eye sparkled. ‘There you have a dim and mighty archangel fitly set before you! The line is worth a hundred pages of fustian. “Ich w?ge die Gedanken in der Schale meines Zornes und die Werke mit dem Gewichte meines Grimms.”6 I like it!’
Both were again silent.
‘Is there ony country where they talk i’ that way?’ asked the old woman, looking up from her knitting.
‘Yes, Hannah – a far larger country than England, where they talk in no other way.’
‘Well, for sure case, I knawn’t how they can understand t’ one t’other: and if either o’ ye went there, ye could tell what they said, I guess?’
‘We could probably tell something of what they said, but not all – for we are not as clever as you think us, Hannah. We don’t speak German, and we cannot read it without a dictionary to help us.’
‘And what good does it do you?’
‘We mean to teach it some time – or at least the elements, as they say; and then we shall get more money than we do now.’
‘Varry like: but give ower studying; ye’ve done enough for to-night.’
‘I think we have: at least I’m tired. Mary, are you?’
‘Mortally: after all, it’s tough work fagging away at a language with no master but a lexicon.’
‘It is: especially such a language as this crabbed but glorious Deutsch. I wonder when St John will come home.’
‘Surely he will not be long now; it is just ten (looking at a little gold watch she drew from her girdle). It rains fast. Hannah, will you have the goodness to look at the fire in the parlour?’
The woman rose: she opened a door, through which I dimly saw a passage: soon I heard her stir a fire in an inner room: she presently came back.
‘Ah, childer!’7 said she, ‘it fair troubles me to go into yond’ room now: it looks so lonesome wi’ the chair empty and set back in a corner.’
She wiped her eyes with her apron: the two girls, grave before, looked sad now.
‘But he is in a better place,’ continued Hannah: ‘we shouldn’t wish him here again. And then, nobody need to have a quieter death nor he had.’
‘You say he never mentioned us?’ inquired one of the ladies.
‘He hadn’t time, bairn: he was gone in a minute, was your father. He had been a bit ailing like the day before, but naught to signify; and when Mr St John asked if he would like either o’ ye to be sent for, he fair laughed at him. He began again with a bit of a heaviness in his head the next day – that is, a fortnight sin’ – and