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 Käte, 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 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. Käte 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.