widows not seldom manifest towards good-looking young
men, came to her in a fine state of wrath, and told her that his chest
had been ransacked (he did not tell her of his loss, for he had not
himself observed it), she did not consider that she violated any
confidence in telling him everything that had occurred. It was all a
mistake, she said; the Herr Brekel had gone into the wrong room; she
must set the matter right at once; that bad young man might be a thief,
after all. Hans felt a cold thrill run through him at the widow's words.
But he controlled himself so well that she did not suspect his inward
perturbation; and she accepted in as good faith his offer to inform the
Herr Brekel of his error as she did, a day later, his assurance that the
matter had been satisfactorily adjusted, and that the innocence of the
apprentice had been proved.

And then Hans returned to his violated chest, and found that the dread
which had assailed his soul was founded in substantial truth--the recipe
was gone! In itself the loss of the recipe was no very great matter, for
he knew it by heart; but that Gottlieb--who had also a cellar full of
rich old honey-cake--should have gained possession of it was a desperate
matter indeed. Here instantly was an end to the hope of successful
rivalry that Hans had cherished; and with the wreck of his luck in
trade, as it seemed to him in the first shock of his misfortune, away
in fragments to the four winds of heaven was scattered every vestige
of probability that he would have luck in love. Being so suddenly
confronted with a compound catastrophe so overwhelming, even a bolder
baker than Hans Kuhn very well might have been for a time aghast.

But as his wits slowly came together again Hans perceived that the game
was not by any means lost, after all; on the contrary, it looked very
much as though he had it pretty well in his own hands. Gottlieb was a
thief, and all that was needed to complete the chain of evidence against
him was his first baking of lebkuchen; for that as clearly would prove
him to be in possession of the stolen recipe as what the widow could
tell would prove that he had created for himself an opportunity to steal
it. The most agreeable way of winning a father-in-law is not by force of
threatening to hale him to a police court, but it is better to win him
that way than not to win him at all, Hans thought; and he thought also
that this was one of the occasions when it was quite justi