he asked Katharine about
the boy: "What is the little fellow doing? Do you still feed him so
well?"

Chapter IV

The time passed in Waltheim as it does everywhere. At the smithy
Katharine sighed at every year's end, as people are apt to do: "Lord,
it has only just begun, and now it is gone already."

Once, when the old year was making way for the new, she added: "One can
see by the boy how old one is growing."

The year just ending was the sixth since the boy at the smithy was
born.

"The boy," Katharine would say, because she would not speak his name
aloud, and yet dared not give him any other.

"Cain!" called the smith from the road, if he wanted the boy in the
workshop, or through the house, if he were looking for him anywhere.
His voice had a sullen ring like that of his biggest anvil, and was so
loud that the name could be heard for a couple of hundred paces round
about. But when anyone asked the child himself his name, he would raise
his delicate face innocently to the questioner and say: "My name is
Cain, Cain."

And he had already become accustomed to say the name twice, for on
hearing it the first time, people either did not understand him or
would not believe him.

Stephen Fausch did not treat the boy a hair's breadth differently from
what he would have done had there been no spot upon him. Since the
child had outgrown the exclusive care of Katharine, and could stand and
walk and feed himself, he still slept in the maid's room upstairs, but
he shared the living room with his father and ate with him at the
table. Stephen did not concern himself much about the child, but he was
not unkind to him; for the first while, it seemed as if he purposely
looked over the top of the little fellow's head. But in the last year
there had come a change, as the little boy's speech and ideas began to
grow clearer and cleverer, and now and then, as is the case with all
children, some speech of his would delight the listener with its
precocity or drollery. The smith led too lonely a life not to welcome
the little change that the boy brought him, although he did not admit
this, either to himself or to others. He called him oftener to the
workshop, tossed him a light hammer to play with, or told him to notice
how he himself shaped a horseshoe, how he bent a glowing bar, or other
such matters. When the two were alone, there was a droll sort of
companionship between them, and they would talk to