she was anxious to find
out whether the masons from this or that place had yet returned home for
the winter, and whether they had brought news of her John. While she was
once more boiling and washing the linen she had been bleaching all
summer long, for which purpose she remained up all night, she would
always be muttering to herself. No one could understand exactly what she
said, but the burden of it was intelligible, for it was always: "That is
for me, and that is for thee." She was in the habit of saying twelve
Paternosters daily for her John, but on this particular washing-night
they became innumerable. When the first snow fell she was always
especially cheerful; for then there could be no more outdoor work, and
then he would be most likely to come home. At these times she would
often talk to a white hen which she kept in a coop, telling it that it
would have to be killed when John came. She had repeated these
proceedings for many years, and people never ceased telling her that
she was foolish to be thus continually thinking of the return of her
John.

This autumn it would be eighteen years since John had gone away, and
every year John Michael Winkler was reported in the paper as missing,
which would be done until his fiftieth year--he was now in his
thirty-sixth. The story circulated in the village that John had gone
among the gipsies. Once, indeed, his mother had mistaken a young gipsy
for him; he was a man who bore a striking resemblance to her missing
son, in that he was small of stature and had the same dark complexion;
and he had seemed rather pleased at being taken for John. But the mother
had put him to the proof, for she still had John's hymn-book and his
confirmation verse; and, inasmuch as the stranger did not know this
verse and could not tell who were his sponsors, or what had happened to
him on the day when Brosi's Severin arrived with his English wife, and
later on when the new well was dug at the town-hall--inasmuch as he did
not satisfy these and other proofs, he could not be the right man. And
yet Marianne used to give the gipsy a lodging whenever he came to the
village, and the children in the streets used to cry "John!" after him.

John was advertised as being liable to military duty and as a deserter;
and although his mother declared that he would have slipped through
under the measuring-stick as "too short," she knew that he would not
escape punishment if he returned, and inferred that this wa