ss and less, and finally was silent altogether. All
kinds of thoughts passed through his mind, and he became more and more
absorbed in them. Perhaps this was the first time in his life that the
strong man was troubled with painful thoughts, which he could not put
down and strangle, as it were, by the force of his resolute will.

After a while Cain rose, still looking very pale. "I have to study," he
said. "Good-night, Father."

"Good-night," answered Stephen.

Then the boy left the room. But the smith sat buried in thought. He
scarcely noticed Katharine, as she went to and fro, clearing the table.
He could still see the boy's white forehead. And then it seemed to him
as if an ugly spot were burning on it, and something within him seemed
to say: "You branded him with that sign of shame!" For a moment facts
and thoughts seemed to become confused. Then he drew his brows together
and thought more intently, and saw everything clearly, as it really
was: Not only had he burdened Maria's boy with that name, that shameful
name, but he had marked him with the shame itself; for the name
awakened the memory of the stain that clung to him from his birth. And
if the village children, when they were simple, innocent little things,
had made fun of Cain because he had a queer name, unlike anybody
else's, now that they had grown bigger just as he had, and already knew
more than was good for them, they pointed scornfully at him, not
because his name was Cain, but because they knew why he bore that name.
But had not he, Stephen Fausch, chosen that it should be so? The
injustice that had been done him, he had chosen to nail firmly and
solidly in place, and firm and solid it should remain!

Two different forces were struggling in Fausch. There was his
obstinacy, his untamed will, that he had never curbed in all his life,
and together with that, something else, that was quite new, something
like pity for the boy, or--who can guess what suddenly arose in revolt
against his iron will. These two forces wrestled together, as it were,
breast to breast, neither would yield, and there they stood, equal in
strength. Fausch's dark brow flushed, he rocked back and forth in his
chair, and his pipe went out. This inward strife gave him a grim hour.
No inner commotion had ever before made the slow, heavy man outwardly
so restless. The lamp was already burning low and threatening to go
out, and Katharine had some time since finished her work in the
kit