said the smith, loosening
the shoe from the gray's foot.

The woman scolded and swore. "What kind of behavior is that! Do you
think I have stolen my time? Are you going to let me take my turn or
not?"

"After I've done with this, or not at all," said Fausch, and as she
came up close to him, he turned his back on her with a jerk. At this,
she was beside herself, harnessed up her horse and turned away from the
smithy toward Waltheim. Her grumbling could be heard for some time.

While the smith was still busy shoeing the trader's horse, a piece of
work which he did without any help, an agonizing cry was heard through
the closed windows of his house. Then a second and a third.

"What's that?" asked Hallheimer.

"She is in labor," growled Stephen.

Thereupon the trader, thinking to make himself agreeable, tried to say
something fitting. "If only it is a boy, to carry on your name, Stephen
Fausch ..."

The smith muttered something to himself, which his companion could not
understand.

"The first child! What a pleasure it will be to you," the trader went
on eagerly.

"It isn't mine," said Stephen Fausch gruffly. With his one eye he
glared at the man, so that his words stuck in his throat. Only then did
the rumor that he had heard occur to Hallheimer:--the rumor that the
smith's wife had been over-intimate with her husband's brother.

At the top of the stone steps of the house there now appeared a woman
who looked very stout, because she wore so many petticoats. With an
important and mysterious look, she nodded to the smith.

"It has come, Stephen Fausch. You have a boy. I--wish you joy!" she
called out. Since the smith behaved as if he saw and heard nothing, her
embarrassment increased; she went dejectedly back into the house.

Stephen laid down the file with which he had been scraping the horse's
hoof, and slowly turned to the trader. "Did you hear what the mid-wife
said?" he asked.

Moritz Hallheimer felt in his pocket and took out a little goldpiece.
"You must make the child a present at the christening," said he,
offering the goldpiece to the smith. But Stephen would not notice the
trader's hand. The eager little old man was quite out of countenance.
He laid the goldpiece on the window-sill of the workshop. "Take it to
the child, Fausch, take it," he begged in his embarrassment.

The horse was now shod, and Stephen led it back to the wagon and tied
it there. Suddenly he raised his great dark head. "Do you