it. The hornbeams had
shot up irregularly; dead branches lashed by the wind from the Venn
stretched themselves in the air like accusing fingers.

Ugh, it must be icy cold there in the winter. Kate involuntarily
drew her cloak of soft cloth lined with silk more tightly round her.
And it must be doubly dark there on dark days. Hardly any light found
its way through the tiny windows owing to the protecting hedge, and the
roof hung low over the entrance. There were no steps, you walked
straight into the room.

The vestryman rattled the iron knocker on the door, which had once
been painted green but had no colour left now. The sound reverberated
through the building, but the door did not open when they tried it. The
woman was probably among the berries, and the children with her. The
hungry screams of the youngest one was all that was heard inside the
locked cottage.

The poor child--oh, she had left it alone again. Kate trembled with
excitement, its screams sounded to her like a call for help.

The vestryman sat down calmly on the chopping-block in front of the
door and drew his pipe out of the pocket of his blue linen smock, which
he had hastily drawn over his working coat in honour of the lady and
the gentleman. Now they would have to wait.

The husband and wife looked at each other much disappointed. Wait?
Kate had refused the seat on the chopping-block, which the old man had
offered her with a certain gallantry. She could not rest, she walked
restlessly up and down in front of the little window, trying in vain to
look through the dark pane.

The child inside screamed more and more loudly. Old Rocherath
laughed: what a roar that was to be sure, Jean-Pierre had powerful
lungs.

Kate could not listen to the screams any longer, they tortured her
both bodily and mentally. Oh, how they made her ears tingle. She
covered them with her hands. And her heart trembled with compassion and
anger: how could its mother remain away so long?

Her brow was wet with perspiration. She stared at the Venn, at the
bare, treeless, tortuous path with burning impatient eyes. At last she
saw some figures--at last!--and yet her breath stopped all at once, her
heart ceased to beat and then suddenly went hammering on at a furious
pace as if mad. There came the child's mother!

Lisa Solheid was carrying a bundle of fagots on her back, which was
fastened round her shoulders with a rope The load was so heavy that it
quite weighed her down,