ith the past and so was more
bound up with it than Cain himself. He, Stephen, was the chief obstacle
that prevented Cain's story from sinking into oblivion. If he parted
from the boy, people would judge him for what he was, instead of for
what he had been!

Fausch had carried these thoughts upstairs with him, and they would not
let go their hold on him. As he sat on his bed, he was struggling with
these ideas.

Until now, Fausch had gone his own way without troubling himself about
anyone. And if a wall stood in his way, he had pushed through it with
his obstinate head, and if anything else was in his way, he had kicked
it aside with his heavy boots. Now for once he must yield, he must
admit that--that in his self-will he had been unjust. If for the boy's
good he should go away, it would be like begging Cain's pardon for what
he had done to him, he, Stephen Fausch, who had no need to ask anyone's
pardon!

This idea was so distasteful to him, that he laughed aloud and was too
angry to sit still. He snatched up the chair by its back and put it
over by the window, and sat down there and gazed out into the night.

The night was very still and clear. There were not many stars in the
sky, but it was mysteriously bright as if from some inner light, and
the few stars in sight were large and still, especially one, which was
just above a dark mountain and had a smaller companion directly above
it. The star gave a bluish light, like moonlight, that shone downwards
from far over the mountain. The great, solemn, silent wall of
mountains, that stood round about the pass, were so clear-cut at the
sky line, that one could count every summit; in the pass itself there
was still a soft light, so that a part of the road was visible in the
midst of the darkness, and the surface of one of the lakes lay
glistening through the night.

At first Fausch did not see this nocturnal landscape, for his anger
seemed, as it were, to lay a hand over his eyes. But gradually the
brilliancy of the two stars, the larger and the smaller, caught his
attention, then the dark distinctness of the mountains, and then the
gray shimmering road and the strange light on the lake. But the more
the great silent picture of the night gained power over his soul, the
more did it appease his anger, until there grew in the mind of this
strange man a stillness and clearness like that which lay over the
landscape. At the same time something recalled to his memory how the