Jorg was to return early the next morning with a team of horses. This was
a great consolation. Old Rahel, too, had regained her self-control, and
was sound asleep.

The children followed her example, and at midnight Elizabeth slept too.

Marx lay beside the hearth, and from his crooked mouth came a strange,
snoring noise, that sounded like the last note of an organ-pipe, from
which the air is expiring.

Hours after all the others were asleep, Adam and the doctor still sat on
a sack of straw, engaged in earnest conversation.

Lopez had told his friend the story of his happiness and sorrow, closing
with the words:

"So you know who we are, and why we left our home. You are giving me your
future, together with many other things; no gift can repay you; but first
of all, it was due you that you should know my past."

Then, holding out his hand to the smith, he asked: "You are a Christian;
will you still cleave to me, after what you have heard?"

Adam silently pressed the Jew's right hand, and after remaining lost in
thought for a time, said in a hollow tone:

"If they catch you, and--Holy Virgin--if they discover . . . Ruth. . . .
She is not really a Jew's child . . . have you reared her as a Jewess?"

"No; only as a good human child."

"Is she baptized?"

Lopez answered this question also in the negative. The smith shook his
head disapprovingly, but the doctor said: "She knows more about Jesus,
than many a Christian child of her age. When she is grown up, she will be
free to follow either her mother or her father."

"Why have you not become a Christian yourself? Forgive the question.
Surely you are one at heart."

"That, that . . . you see, there are things. . . . Suppose that every
male scion of your family, from generation to generation, for many
hundred years, had been a smith, and now a boy should grow up, who said:
I--I despise your trade?'"

"If Ulrich should say: 'I-I wish to be an artist;' it would be agreeable
to me."

"Even if smiths were persecuted like us Jews, and he ran from your guild
to another out of fear?"

"No--that would be base, and can scarcely be compared with your case; for
see--you are acquainted with everything, even what is called
Christianity; nay, the Saviour is dear to you; you have already told me
so. Well then! Suppose you were a foundling and were shown our faith and
yours, and asked for which you would decide, which would you choose?"

"We pray for life and peace, and