is a fool," said the smith. As he spoke, they had already
reached home, and without pausing, he went at once into his workshop.
The child got no other answer.

But during the next few weeks, a curious wave from Waltheim reached the
smithy. The village people grew quite disturbed over Stephen Fausch's
whim, to make his boy bear the name of a sinner. They might have worked
themselves into this state long ago, or even when the boy was
christened, but at that time, the little commotion had quickly died
away. They now actually saw among them the child whom the smith had
branded with a mark, and he was a child upon whom the hardest and most
commonplace among them could not look without a secret joy. Therefore
they took him under their protection. The first who came to see Stephen
Fausch was the teacher, an enlightened young man, and accordingly more
officious. He greeted the smith a little condescendingly, a trifle
masterfully. Then he blurted out at once the errand that had brought
him. "You must change your boy's name, Fausch. He can't let every one
call him by a shameful name like Cain. Give him your own name, Stephen,
or some name or other, but--"

This long speech was cut short by a rough, short questioning "What?"
from Fausch. Then the smith left the room, in which the teacher had
taken him by surprise, and shut the door with a bang. He was seen no
more. So the teacher had to withdraw with nothing gained. After the
teacher's failure, one and another tried to make Fausch change his
mind, a good-natured old man who was a member of the school board, the
village constable, whose opinion of himself was only equalled by his
great stature, and finally a couple of sympathetic women. Fausch let
them all chatter, gave them no answer, and only ran away, when they
went a little too far. And so he stemmed the tide, that flowed around
his house, like a rock against which the waves must part.

"What a bullheaded fellow he is," the Waltheimers would grumble. But
finally this little commotion too subsided. The smith had his own way.

Weeks and month flew past; the years went more slowly, but still they
went.

[Illustration: EVENING]

As the boy, Cain, grew older, he grew more lonely. His playmates became
estranged from him. He was too different from the others, and so they
did not associate much with him, and then his name always aroused their
scorn. At home he still had Katharine, the maid. She spoiled him when
he was twelve yea