"Why, the sacks in which the corn is brought to me. I get all the corn, but who gets the sacks?"
"Hm," said my uncle, "that's a difficult question in law, Miller. I did not think of it, and there's nothing about it in the contract, but, if you'll follow my advice, you'll keep them yourself for the present, for what says the Lubeck law: 'beati possidentes,' that is in German, 'what a man has, that he's got.' Now, Miller, I have helped you out of everything. But one thing I insist upon: silence!--Not a soul must be spoken to about this matter. Do you hear?--not a soul. I will speak to Itzig. He must take corn, instead of money, and by Easter the debt will all be cleared off, and then, Miller Voss...."
"And then, Herr Rathsherr?..."
"Then--it will all be overplus--But, Miller, the affair remains a secret."
The Miller promised, and the Herr Rathsherr set off home again, and Heinrich and Fieka saw him nod from his carriage to the Miller, and lay his finger on his lips.
"Keeping secrets is not one of my gifts, Fieka," said Heinrich: "I shall go to your father and speak to him."
"Do so," said Fieka. But if she had known the state the Miller was in, she would certainly have told him to wait.
The old Miller was in a strange mood. That morning he had been a beggar, and had been unwilling to give his child away, because he had no dower for her. Now he was a rich man, and his only daughter had no need to take the first who came; she might become a fine lady as well as anybody else. The change had come too quickly, he did not rightly know what had happened to him; and there now arose, too, a secret fear in him, lest all might not be as it ought to be, and great anxiety lest what he was going to do might not be right. "But," said he to himself, "the Amtshauptmann himself said 'what is written is written;' and the Rathsherr must know better than me what is right."--If it was difficult for him, in ordinary times, to come to a decision, it was quite impossible at a moment like this.
When Heinrich made his offer therefore, the Miller began to talk about the lawsuit, and said Heinrich was not at all to suppose that he was a ruined man. Many had tried to drown him, but he still swam at the top.
Heinrich then said that he had no evil intentions, that he had thought to himself that the Miller would give him his Fieka, and would sell him his lease, and that his father and mother-in-law might live with him in peace and quietness for the rest of their lives.