y. 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 wage die Gedanken in der Schale meines Zornes und die Werke mit dem Gewichte meines Grimms." 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 h
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