During this discussion, to which Franz Schorn listened very attentively, the physician accidentally pushed aside the left arm of his neighbour--Franz Schorn--who dropped the cigar which he was holding in his hand and stooped to pick it up. As he did so, he instinctively drew from his bosom his right hand, which had hitherto been concealed by his coat. It was bound about with a white bandage, upon which were several spots of blood. He thrust it quickly into his breast again, but not before the physician had noticed the spots on the white linen.
"Ah, Franz! What is the matter with your hand?" he asked kindly.
"Nothing," Franz replied curtly; "a slight cut."
"Slight! That can hardly be; if you have a bandaged hand and don't use it, it must be a tolerably deep cut. Of course, you have done nothing, as usual, but wrap a rag about it. You young people are incorrigible. You never reflect that the neglect of such cuts, which you consider insignificant, may cost you the hand itself. Take off the bandage; I want to see what it is."
"It is nothing; a trifle, not worth mentioning."
"All the more readily should you show it to me. You owe obedience to an old friend of your father's, you obstinate fellow; so off with your bandage; I wish to see the wound."
"Certainly, if you insist," Franz replied, holding out his hand and unwinding the bandage. It did not come off easily, but adhered to the wound and a few drops of blood followed its removal.
"A couple of good cuts," said the physician, examining the hand; "not dangerous; they will heal without any particular care if you spare your hand a little for a couple of days; but how did you get such strange cuts! Four fingers implicated, and another gash in the palm. It looks as if you had done it with a knife."
"And so I did," Franz replied. "I was using a large knife in the vineyard to-day and laid it down upon a high wall; it fell and would have pierced my foot, if instead of shifting it, I had not foolishly grasped at the falling knife and seized the sharp blade instead of the handle. That is the whole story. Such slight cuts are not worth mentioning." He wrapped the bandage around his hand again and concealed it as before in the breast of his coat.
"Such slight cuts are not worth mentioning," the young man had said, and it was true; they were insignificant. Nevertheless they aroused in me a chain of thought which filled me with dread. Involuntarily I thought of the bloody, dagger-like knife which I had seen in the Lonely House. If the murderer in his contest with the old man had endeavoured to take the knife from him and had accidentally seized it by the blade, his hand would have been wounded precisely as was that of Franz Schorn. Schorn had hitherto kept his right hand concealed. Why so? Did he wish to conceal the wound? An involuntary motion, an accident, had compelled him to show the bandaged hand, and it was with great reluctance that he had acceded to the physician's request.