t cannot comfort us. You ought to have told us what
we were doing, then we wouldn't have acted so."

But it made no impression on him. He had never felt a pain or a sorrow,
and did not know what they were, in any really informing way. He had no
knowledge of them except theoretically--that is to say, intellectually.
And of course that is no good. One can never get any but a loose and
ignorant notion of such things except by experience. We tried our best
to make him comprehend the awful thing that had been done and how we
were compromised by it, but he couldn't seem to get hold of it. He said
he did not think it important where Fischer went to; in heaven he would
not be missed, there were "plenty there." We tried to make him see that
he was missing the point entirely; that Fischer, and not other people,
was the proper one to decide about the importance of it; but it all went
for nothing; he said he did not care for Fischer--there were plenty more
Fischers.

The next minute Fischer went by on the other side of the way, and it
made us sick and faint to see him, remembering the doom that was upon
him, and we the cause of it. And how unconscious he was that anything
had happened to him! You could see by his elastic step and his alert
manner that he was well satisfied with himself for doing that hard
turn for poor Frau Brandt. He kept glancing back over his shoulder
expectantly. And, sure enough, pretty soon Frau Brandt followed after,
in charge of the officers and wearing jingling chains. A mob was in her
wake, jeering and shouting, "Blasphemer and heretic!" and some among
them were neighbors and friends of her happier days. Some were trying
to strike her, and the officers were not taking as much trouble as they
might to keep them from it.

"Oh, stop them, Satan!" It was out before we remembered that he
could not interrupt them for a moment without changing their whole
after-lives. He puffed a little puff toward them with his lips and they
began to reel and stagger and grab at the empty air; then they broke
apart and fled in every direction, shrieking, as if in intolerable pain.
He had crushed a rib of each of them with that little puff. We could not
help asking if their life-chart was changed.

"Yes, entirely. Some have gained years, some have lost them. Some few
will profit in various ways by the change, but only that few."

We did not ask if we had brought poor Fischer's luck to any of them.
We did not wish to know. W