en looking for for years ...?"

Theresa nodded. She took out a hairpin, and stuck it in a crust of
bread. Jason Philip got up, clasped his hands behind his back, and began
to walk back and forth. Just then Rieke came in and began to clear off
the table. She went about her business in a slow but noisy fashion. She
made things rattle, even if she could not make them hum. When she was
through, Jason Philip, his hands pressed to his hips, his elbows
protruding, planted himself before Theresa.

"I suppose you think I am going to let you browbeat me," he began.
"Well, my dear woman, you're mistaken. Listen! Are you angry at me
because I have created for you and your children a dignified existence?
Do you take it amiss of me for having kept your sister from going to the
poor-house? You act as though I had won that much money at the county
fair, or had squandered an equal amount at the same place. The truth is,
Gottfried Nothafft entrusted me with three thousand taler. That's what
he did; that's the truth. It was his intention to keep the whole affair
from the chatter of women. And he willed that I should use this
hard-earned capital in a productive way, and not give it to the culprit
who would waste it in debauchery and worse if possible."

"Ill-gotten goods seldom prosper," said Theresa, without looking up.
"Things may go along all right for ten years, and that seems like a long
time, but the vengeance of Heaven comes in the eleventh, as it has
already come in the case of little Marcus."

"Theresa--you're talking like a mad woman," said Jason Philip at the top
of his voice. With that he picked up a chair, and threw it on the floor
so violently that every cup, spoon, and plate in the room shook.

Theresa turned her peasant face toward him without the shadow of a trace
of fear. He was a trifle alarmed: "You'll have to be responsible, if you
can, for any misfortune that visits us in the future." She spoke these
words with a deep voice.

"Do you think I am a bandit?" said Jason Philip. "Do you think I want to
pocket the money? Don't you think that I am capable of anything better
or higher than that? Or is ambition of any sort quite beyond your powers
of comprehension?"

"Well, what ambitions do you have?" asked Theresa in a tone of
sullenness, her eyes in the meantime blinking.

"Listen," Jason Philip continued, as he sat down on the chair he had so
violently abused a minute before, and assumed the air of a teacher:
"The