Again they held their breath and listened eagerly, but all was still.
"I rejoiced too soon," said Petrowitsch, his teeth chattering from excitement, "we are still nearer death than life."
Again distinct knocks were heard, and Petrowitsch complained that the hammering seemed to knock his head, and that every blow went through his brain.
Lenz could not have set the clocks properly, for suddenly one of them began to play the air of the grand Hallelujah, and Lenz sang with it:--"Hallelujah! Praise God, the Lord!"
Annele sang with him, placing one hand on Lenz's shoulder, and the other on the head of her child, and up above a voice shouted--"Hallelujah! Hallelujah!"
"Pilgrim! my dearest of all friends!" cried Lenz, in a voice that was heartrending.
The door of the room was broken in with a hatchet.
"Are you all still alive?" cried Pilgrim.
"Praise and thanks be to the Lord! we are--all of us."
Pilgrim first hugged Petrowitsch, whom he took for Lenz, and the old man kissed him on both cheeks, Russian fashion.
Immediately after Pilgrim, the Techniker appeared, followed by Faller, Don Bastian, and all the members of the Choral Society.
"Indeed he is, I left him in my house," said Don Bastian.
By this time the snow was shovelled away from the window.
"The sun! the sun! I see the sun once more!" cried Annele, sinking on her knees.
The musical clock continued playing the Hallelujah, the Schoolmaster joined, and the whole of the Choral Society sung with him in full loud tones. It seemed as if an impetus had been given to the mass of snow by the powerful chorus, for the avalanche rolled away from the front of the house down into the valley.
The door had remained open, and the moment the windows were also thrown up, the raven shot away into the sky, over the heads of all the assembled people.
Outside, however, a raven had been long wheeling about, waiting for its mate; and now they flew along together, first high into the air, and then dipping down in circles far away over the valley.
The first woman who came up to Annele, was Ernestine, her cousin, who had heard of the sad catastrophe, and also of the death of the Landlady, Annele's mother, and had hurried to Annele in the hope of comforting her; she knelt down beside her; Lenz was leaning on Pilgrim.