ket.

The tone and manner said more than the words. Carl's pulses bounded; he
seized her unresisting hand and covered it with kisses. "So! this is
the bashful young man!" thought Katrine. "I shall not need to encourage
him any more, surely."

The night was coming on; Katrine remembered her father, and started
towards the mill, whose broad arms could scarcely be seen through the
twilight. Carl accompanied her to the gate, and, after a furtive glance
upward to the house-windows, bade her farewell, with a kiss, and turned
homeward, feeling himself a man for the first time in his life.

Frau Proch had seen the pantomime through the flowers that stood on the
window-sill, not ill-pleased, and was waiting her son's return. An hour
passed, and he did not come. Another hour, and she began to grow
anxious. When it was near midnight, she roused her nearest neighbor and
asked him to go towards the mill and look for Carl. An hour of terrible
suspense ensued. It was worse than she had even feared. Carl lay by the
roadside, not far from the mill, insensible, covered with blood,
moaning feebly at first, and afterwards silent, if not breathless.
Ghastly wounds covered his head, and his arms and shoulders were livid
with bruises. The neighboring peasants surrounded the apparently
lifeless body, and listened with awe to the frenzied imprecations of
Frau Proch upon the murderer of her son. "May he die in a foreign
land," said she, lifting her withered hands to Heaven, "without wife to
nurse him or priest to speak peace to his soul! May his body lie
unburied, a prey for wolves and vultures! May his inheritance pass into
the hands of strangers, and his name perish from the earth!" They
muttered their prayers, as they encountered her bloodshot, but tearless
eyes, and left her with her son.

For a whole day and night he did not speak; then a violent brain-fever
set in, and he raved continually. He fancied himself pursued by Hans
Stolzen, and recoiled as from the blows of his staff. When this was
reported, suspicion was directed at once to Stolzen as the criminal;
but before an arrest could be made, it was found that he had fled. His
disappearance confirmed the belief of his guilt. In truth, it was the
rejected suitor, who, in a fit of jealous rage, had waylaid his rival
in the dark, beat him, and left him for dead.

Katrine, who had always disliked Stolzen, especially after he had
pursued her with his coarse and awkward gallantry, now nat