When she lifted up her head, and glanced at her father, she looked as if some one had stabbed her with a knife, and the anguish of death was in her face as she said "Father, father."
And the old Miller sat there fidgeting about with his night-cap, and he looked at his child in her anguish and then again at the glittering money. All at once he sprang up, nearly overturning the table, and cried:
"God in Heaven! I know nothing about it. I don't know what has become of him; he lay in the straw, that I know," and added in a feeble voice, "Friedrich must know the rest."
Fieka left the money, and darted towards Friedrich. "Where is the Frenchman?" she screamed.
Friedrich, with his old iron face, stood quietly looking at her. "God save us!" he said at last. "Is this to be a court of justice then? Why, Fieka, Fieka! Do I look like a robber and murderer? I laid the Frenchman with my own hands under a beech-tree in the Stemhagen wood, and, if the night air hasn't been too cool for him, he'll be lying there now--still as a rat--for he was dead drunk."
"That he was," said the Miller.
Fieka looked first at Friedrich and then at her old father, who was listening to what Friedrich was saying, "Friedrich," she said, "how could I help thinking it. You are always talking about killing and murdering Frenchmen." And she put her apron up to her eyes, threw herself down on the bench behind the large, tile-covered stove, and began to cry bitterly.
"Dumouriez! That I am," said Friedrich, "and if I could wring the necks of those d--d patriots I'd do it. But a man who could not defend himself?--And for his money too!" ... muttered something in his beard and went to the door; he took his knife from under the latch, and then turned round and said:
"Miller, the air is clear again, for the two girls are gone to their work. I have given you the things; consider well what you do with them. If you wish to keep them--well and good. I have nothing to say against it, for, according to my poor wits you've a right to them. The French have taken more than this from you; and, if you don't wish it to be talked about, I, for my part, can be silent. But if you are going to deliver it up to the Amtshauptmann, and have to swear that nothing has been taken out of it, just say that I have taken my share."
"Friedrich, Friedrich," said the Miller's wife, "do not be bringing yourself into trouble, nor us either.--At this moment you seem to me to be like the serpent in the Garden of Paradise."