lly aware, how bitter the hour must
have been for the smith. He could still see him standing there,
dragging out one sentence after another, as if he were doing some
fearfully heavy piece of work, then stopping again and feeling, as it
were, for the words which he could not find. At last he wrenched his
thoughts away from the image of Fausch and began to consider the
circumstances that had brought him here. He was not at all pleased to
have Fausch leave the smithy again, for he had had no other such worker
there, but yet he agreed with him as long as he and the boy were
together, their common story would never be buried in oblivion. So the
smith must go, certainly he must go. If the boy--if Franz alone was
there--Simmen brought his fist down on the table half angrily, half
laughing to himself--it wasn't really so wholly impossible, that they
should make a match of it, the boy and Vincenza! The host thought how
nicely Franz had served in the guests' room, and what a favorite he had
been with the travelers, and he, Simmen, was not a narrow minded man: A
serious and hardworking man stood higher in his esteem than a rich or
well born man of whose character one could not feel so sure. So it did
not seem so impossible to him, about Vincenza and the boy. But--Simmen
hit the table another blow as if he were impatient--all the same the
affair was not quite to his taste.

Chapter X

When Hallheimer, the trader, came back from Italy, he heard something
on the mountain which astonished him; he was not to sell the smithy at
Waltheim, for Stephen Fausch was going back to his old place within a
short time.

The trader asked what had happened.

He got no answer. The smith only said, rudely: "It's none of your
business what I do." So Fausch gave the trader a new nut to crack,
though he had long puzzled over the smith's behavior and character. But
Simmen, the landlord, of whom he also asked the cause of Fausch's
departure, was equally evasive.

Meanwhile Stephen Fausch passed the days exactly as he had always done;
now and then he nailed up a box of his possessions and gradually got
his goods once more ready for moving. Cain and Katharine tiptoed around
him with a sort of timidity. There was something about Fausch that they
did not rightly understand, and that made them both involuntarily feel
small and humble. Yet his manner had not altered in any way; he was
sparing of his words as always, and th