"Only think, father!"--With these words, he entered the small room, in which, besides Kummas, he found the old bird-catcher, who looked at him with an angry countenance, and his father, too, seemed unusually disconcerted.
"There comes the young good-for-nothing," said Butter. "Bird-thief, and not Christlieb, should he be called."
Christlieb's words stuck in his throat at this salutation; and, much amazed and perplexed, he looked at the old man, to see whether he were speaking in jest or in earnest. But his father ended his doubt by saying, in a serious tone of voice, "What have you done, Christlieb? Confess the truth."
A deep red suffused Christlieb's face, as, with the greatest faithfulness, he related what had happened to him.
When he had finished, Butter said with bitterness, "So you wish to make us believe that a runaway boy, who had escaped from his tutor, played the trick, and not you, you young rascal, but your ghost (doppelgänger)! A likely story, forsooth! Will you still deny that you broke and destroyed all my nets?--that you let twelve thrushes, eighteen finches, nine-and-twenty other birds, not to speak of the very small ones, escape? Such a number I never caught at once in my life; and while I ran full of joy into the house, to get my old wife and Malchen to come and help me, the rascal falls upon the whole, tears my snares to pieces, sets all the birds at liberty, and then laughs at me scornfully from behind a bush, when I try to catch him."
"I never did such a thing," maintained Christlieb, shocked.
"What!" cried Butter, in a greater passion than ever; "will you give me the lie to my face? Have I become so blind that I no longer know you when I see you? Besides, was not Malchen, who thinks so much of you, there as a witness? And do we not know, likewise, that, in your folly, you wish there was not a bird-catcher in all the world, and that all the birds were free?"
"Acknowledge your fault, my son," said Kummas mildly, "and we may be able to make all right again."
"But I have not done what Butter says," answered Christlieb, weeping.
"Friend," said Kummas, "I really know not what to think of all this. It is true that Christlieb has never once deceived me, and----"