A moonbeam fell on something shining that leant against a kitchen chair. It was Heppner's sword. Heimert took it up and carefully hung it on its nail in the passage.
For a moment he stood listening. The Heppner baby was crying; the soothing murmurs of its mother could be plainly heard: "Sh, sh!"
He stepped back on tiptoe, drew the door gently to, and began hastily to undress. Then he lay down quietly in bed, taking pains not to make the bedstead creak.
His precautions were superfluous; Albina slept soundly. An earthquake would hardly have awakened her.
The deputy sergeant-major lay and listened. He could only hear the beating of his own heart, and through the wall the muffled sound of the child's crying.
"Widow and orphan," he thought.
The wailing voice subsided by degrees. The child had fallen asleep, or the mother had taken it to her breast.
Its father was lying up there on the hill-side, his huge body blocking the pathway.
Schellhorn, the fat paymaster of the regiment, whom Surgeon-major Andreae sent every spring to Carlsbad for a cure, found the corpse during his early morning constitutional.
He hastened to the barracks and gave the alarm.