. "If you love me, leave him. Oh Paul, believe me, do
believe me when I say he can't help it, he must run about, rush about,
be out of doors--he must."

"You always have some excuse. Just think of the story of the
knapsack when first he went to school--the rascal had thrown it up into
a pine-tree. If a labourer had not found it by accident and brought it
to us, because he read our name on the primer, we might have
looked for it for a long time. You excused that--well, that was nothing
very bad--a fit of wantonness--but now you are excusing something quite
different; and everything." The man, who generally yielded to his wife
in all points, grew angry in his grave anxiety. "I implore you, Kate,
don't be so incredibly weak with the boy. Where will it lead to?"

"It will lead him to you and me." She pointed gravely to him and
herself. And then she laid her hand on her heart with an expression of
deep emotion.

"What do you mean? I don't understand you. Please express yourself a
little more clearly, I'm not in a humour to guess riddles."

"If you can't guess it, you'll not understand it either if I say it
more clearly." She bent her head and then went back to her former seat.
But she was not lost in thought any longer, it seemed to him as if she
were leaning forward to catch the shrill shouts of triumph that rose
high above the roof from the waste field at the back of the house.

"You'll never be able to manage the boy."

"Oh yes, I shall."

"Of course you will, if you let him do exactly what he likes." The
man strode quickly out of the room; his anger was getting the mastery
of him.

Paul Schlieben was seriously angry with his wife, perhaps for the
first time in their married life. How could Kate be so unreasonable?
take so little notice of his orders, as though he had never given
them--nay, even act in direct opposition to him? Oh, the rascal was
cunning enough, he drew his conclusions from it already. And if he did
not do so as yet, still he felt instinctively what a support he had in
his mother. It was simply incredible how weak Kate was.

His wife's soft sensitive nature, which had attracted him to
her in the first instance and which had had the same charm for him
all the years they had been married, now seemed exaggerated all at
once--childish. Yes, this timorousness, this everlasting dread of what
was over and done with was childish. They had not heard anything more
about the boy's mother, why then conjure