"Mother, dear mother, don't talk so. Would you have me leave you when you're in trouble, and in a dishonest way?"
"Dishonest, Fieka?"
"Yes, dishonest, mother," she answered, "for when the Merchant sought me, he thought we were rich, and therefore he wished to have me, but I would not deceive him. I knew we were poor, for though you and father in your goodness have tried to keep it from me that we had lost our money, I have seen it for a long while. Now, pretty nearly every one knows it, so if any one comes and wants to marry me, he will want me and not my money; and perhaps he will be the right one."
Then she got up, and put her knitting things away and kissed her mother. "Good night," she said and went into her bedroom.
The Miller's wife, after sitting thinking some time longer, sighed: "She's right, and we must trust in God, who orders all for the best."
She too went to bed, and everything lay in deep quiet. Only the Mill went working on without ceasing or resting, grinding and groaning, flinging its arms about like a man in sore trouble striving and struggling to rise above the toil of daily life. And from the wheel the water ever drips like bitter sweat; and deep down below the stream rushes on with its monotonous chant: "Nought avails it, nought avails it. I am thy heart. As long as I flow wave upon wave, wish upon wish, so long hast thou no rest. But when autumn comes and the corn is ripe, my stream will slacken; and then the miller will close his mill, and everything be standing still,--and then 'tis Sunday."
CHAPTER III.
Why Fritz Sahlmann got a box on the ears, and the watchmaker spent the night fighting with Mamsell Westphalen's four-post bed, and why the French Colonel paid a visit to the watchmaker in a red blanket.
When the Miller's waggon had driven off, the Amtshauptmann began to walk towards the house, but suddenly turning round again, he went up to Herr Droz and asked: "Droz, how much do I owe you?" Droz said as well as he could that he had been very glad to do it, for "ze Allemagne is now my patrie and I am tout for ze patrie."
"I don't mean that," said the old Herr, "I meant for my watch which you set to rights for me?" Droz replied that that was already paid for, adding "ze leetle boy, Fritz Sahlmann, had make it all right."