s son as he chose.
So he wrote the word in the little blank space on which Stephen's eye
rested.

Accordingly Maria's boy was named Cain, duly and lawfully. When the
name stood in black and white, in the book, Fausch nodded, quickly,
crossly, and indifferently, as if to say: "There it stands now! Of
course it would have to be there!" When the clerk went on writing:
"Legitimate son of Stephen Fausch and Maria his wife, _nee_ Lehr," he
laughed aloud, but he made no objection.

After this business was finished, there remained only Fausch's errand
at the minister's to be done. The pastor was a stout, phlegmatic old
man. He did, indeed, look surprised, when the smith told him the name,
by which he wanted the child baptized, and thought, as the clerk had,
at first, that such a name would never do. But when Stephen grew
impatient, it occurred to the worthy man, that in any contest with
these hard-headed peasants during his long ministry, he had often got
the worst of it, and that strife always cost him too much trouble, and
his weight and his comfort did not permit him to make any resistance.
So he too wrote the name in the register: Cain Fausch.

Thus the smith had butted his head through two walls.

At home, in Katharine's attic room, lay the child, whose brow had just
been branded with a shameful mark, and slept and throve; for the maid
understood the care of babies.

During the next few days, Maria was carried away from the smithy to the
churchyard at Waltheim. This gave the village people plenty to talk
about. The name that had been given to Maria's boy was noised abroad,
and idle tongues found fresh work to do. Finally Stephen, the smith,
had the midwife carry the boy, firmly bound on his pillows, to the
church, while he and Katharine went also, as godparents. And now the
village gossips could scarcely find a moment's rest.

But all this too passed by. The smith carried on his work, grumbling,
obstinate and solitary, for indeed he had been a lonely man all his
life. He did not seem at all changed, and the fact that his wife was
gone forever seemed to have left no trace upon him. He never asked
about the child and saw it more rarely than ever. Toward his customers
he had his old self-willed manner, which angered some, and made others
laugh. He constantly had enough customers to have found an apprentice
useful, but he did not employ one. Perhaps the fact that his brother,
who used to help him, had behaved badly, mad