eid
from Longfaye, and that they should fetch his wife.

"I was just cutting my hedge that day, when somebody came running
up. And I started off with Lisa, who was six months gone with
Jean-Pierre at the time. But when we came there it was already too
late.

"They had left him lying not far from the large cross. They had
wanted to carry him to a house at Ruitzhof, but he had said 'Leave me.
I'll die here.' And he gazed at the sun.

"Sir, it was as large and red in the sky that day--as large--as it
will be on the Day of Judgment. Sir, he was bathed in sweat and
blood--they had chased him for hours--but he still enjoyed gazing at
the sun.

"Sir, the fellow who had shot him was almost out of his mind; he
held him on his knees and wept. Sir, no,"--the vestryman gave himself a
shake and his gestures expressed the aversion he felt--"I would not
like to be a douanier!"

The old man's voice had grown deeper and hoarser--it was a sign of
the sympathy he felt--now it got its former even-tempered ring again.
"If it's agreeable to you, ma'am, we'll go now."

"Oh, the child, the poor child," whispered Kate, quite shaken.

"Do you think the widow will part with her youngest child?" asked
Paul Schlieben, seized with a sudden fear. This child that had
been born after its father's death--was it possible?

"Oh!" the old man rocked his head to and fro and chuckled. "If you
give a good sum for it. She has enough of them."

Nikolas Rocherath was quite the peasant again now; it was no longer
the same man who had spoken of the sun in the Venn and Solheid's death.
The point now was to get as much out of these people as possible, to
fleece a stranger and a townsman into the bargain to the best of his
ability.

"Hundred thalers would not be too much to ask," he said, blinking
sideways at the gentleman's grave face. What a lot of money he must
have, why, not a muscle of his face had moved.

The old peasant had been used to haggling all his life when trading
in cattle, now he gazed at the strange gentleman full of admiration for
such wealth. He led the way to Solheid's cottage with alacrity.

CHAPTER IV

Like all the houses in the village, the Solheids' cottage stood quite
alone behind a hedge that reached as high as the gable. But the hedge,
which was to protect it against the storms that raged in the Venn and
the heavy snowdrifts, was not thick any longer; you could see that
there was no man's hand there to take care of