rd, with a look
of devotion on his dark, almost ugly face. Wasn't he a strange fellow!
Stubborn and rough, like a brute! And yet there was in him something
fine and delicate, that seemed foreign to him. God knows in what corner
of his heart lurked this--this fineness, that made anything beautiful
that he saw affect him as the minister's sermon or a great joy or--no
matter what, might affect other people. Every time Hallheimer came near
the man he had to wonder at him, and--because he wondered at him, he
kept on stopping to see him and--but--but, he was going to have the
baby christened Cain--

Presently Stephen gave the statuette back. "Thank you for showing me
that," said he. "If I can ever manage it, I will go to Italy myself,"
he added, and turned toward the south, gazing into the distance and
seeming quite to forget the trader and his wagon.

Hallheimer packed up his property and took the reins. "I must go," said
he, "Goodby, Stephen Fausch." And then he drove on.

The smith did not take the trouble to look after him. The wagon rolled
away, accompanied by the trampling sound of the horses' feet. It was
quite a while before Fausch went slowly back to his workshop, where he
rummaged among his things, putting them in order, and once stepped to
the door, as a wagon drove rapidly by; then he looked up at the windows
of his house, as if he recollected himself, and then went up the
outside steps. The trader's present of the goldpiece he left lying
where it was.

As Fausch stepped into the dark upper passageway, the woman who had
already told him the news came toward him, "It is good that you have
come, Fausch," said she hurriedly, "I--I think you'd better send for
the doctor. I don't like the way your wife is."

Then Fausch passed by her and went into the bedroom where Maria lay.

Chapter III

Katharine, the maid, had the baby with her in her own room. She
understood the care of children; in her younger days she had been a
nurse on a nobleman's estate. That was a long while ago. Katharine was
now old and thin and worn out, but she had not forgotten about nursing.
Indeed she handled the blacksmith's son with the same care and
tenderness with which, in her youth, she had tended the child of her
aristocratic employers. Ever since the evening when he was born she had
kept the boy with her; for it was on that very evening that the
mother's lingering death began. The doctor came from Waltheim