ver as though it were forever. The miller found that the
light and the melody of his house were gone. Katrine was silent and
sorrowful; her frame wasted and her step grew feeble. To all his offers
of condolence she made no reply, except to remind him how with tears
she had besought his interference in Carl's behalf. She would not be
comforted. The father little knew the feeling she possessed; he had
thought that her attachment to her rustic lover was only a girlish
fancy, and that she would speedily forget him; but now her despairing
look frightened him. To the neighbors, who looked inquisitively as he
sat by the mill-door, smoking, he complained of the quality of his
tobacco, vowing that it made his eyes so tender that they watered upon
the slightest whiff.

For six months Schoenfeld wisely kept away; that period, he thought,
would be long enough to efface any recollection of the absent soldier.
Then he presented himself, and, in his usual imperious way, offered his
hand to Katrine. The miller was inclined to favor his suit. In wealth
and position Schoenfeld was first in the village; he would be a powerful
ally, and a very disagreeable enemy. In fact, Rauchen really feared to
refuse the demand; and he plied his daughter with such argument as he
could command, hoping to move her to accept the offer. Katrine,
however, was convinced of the truth of her former suspicion, that Carl
was a victim of Schoenfeld's craft; and her rejection of his proposal
was pointed with an indignation which she took no pains to conceal. The
old scar showed strangely white in his purple face, as he left the
mill, vowing vengeance for the affront.

Rauchen and his daughter were now more solitary than ever. The father
had forgotten the roaring stories he used to tell to the neighboring
peasants, over foaming flagons of ale, at the little inn; he sat at his
mill-door and smoked incessantly. Katrine shunned the festivities in
which she was once queen, and her manner, though kindly, was silent and
reserved; she went to church, it is true, but she wore a look of
settled sorrow that awed curiosity and even repelled sympathy. But
scandal is a plant that needs no root in the earth; like the houseleek,
it can thrive upon air; and those who separate themselves the most
entirely from the world are apt, for that very reason, to receive the
larger share of its attention. The village girls looked first with
pity, then with wonder, and at length with aversion