"What is the matter?"
"Get up: it is time to hide our money."
"But what is going on?"
"Nothing. Be quiet—make no noise—Grédel is asleep. You will carry the basket: put into it your ring and your ear-rings, everything that we have got. You hear me! I am going to empty the ditch, and we will bury everything at the bottom of it."
Then, without answering, she arose.
I went down to the mill, opened the back-door softly, and listened. Nothing was stirring in the village; you might have heard a cat moving. The mill had stopped, and the water was pretty high. I lifted the mill-dam, the water began to rush, boiling, down the gulley; but our neighbors were used to this noise even in their sleep, so all remained quiet.
Then I went in again, and I was busy emptying into a corner the little box of oak in which I kept my tools—the pincers, the hammer, the screw-driver, and the nails, when my wife, in her slippers, came downstairs. She had the basket under her arm, and was carrying the lighted lantern. I blew it out in a moment, thinking: Never was a woman such a fool.
Downstairs I asked Catherine if everything was in the basket.
"Yes."
"Right. But I have brought from Saverne sixteen hundred francs: the wheat and the flour sold well."