"Why, Friedrich tells you he is in the Stemhagen Wood."
"Indeed!" said the Miller scornfully. "Do you think then that he would lie there in this weather from eight o'clock in the evening till nine o'clock in the morning? He will have gone on his way long ago; and who is to order me to run after him with his money?"
He began to count again, and his wife sat down and folded her hands in her lap, and sighed. "You know who orders it."
Fieka was still sitting on the bench crying by herself. The Miller went on counting the money, but looked up so frequently at Fieka that it seemed as if he must certainly miscount. At last he had finished, and leaning with his two hands on the table, he looked once more over the treasure, and said,--"A third of this gold and silver would make more than seven hundred thalers in Prussian money. Now, we are out of our troubles."
Then Fieka stood up and dried her eyes; her face was pale and quiet;--"Our troubles are only just beginning," she said in a low voice.
"Don't talk like that, Fieka," said her father, and turned his head away from her.
"From this time forward we shall eat unblessed bread, and sleep unblessed sleep, and you can bury the money and bury your own good name with it.
"There is no question of burying," said the Miller, "No indeed! I shall pay my debts with it honestly."
"Honestly, Father? And if it were so--which it is not--would not the old Herr Amtshauptmann ask you what money you had paid the Jew with? And would not the French ask where you got the horse from? And how can you be sure that Friedrich will not tell?"
The Miller looked half taken aback and half angry, and was just going to burst out as people do when any one catches them in some stupid or dishonest act. They try to silence their conscience by bluster, as children in the dark try to keep away the ghosts by whistling and singing. But Fieka did not let the storm come; she flung her arms round her father, looked straight into his eyes, and cried--"Father! Father! Take the money to the bailiwick; give it to the Herr Amtshauptmann. You know he said he would not forget you. How often you have told me about your old father, and about your mother, how she honestly earned her bread to the end of her life by spinning; and how often you have told me about when you were an apprentice, and your finding the other apprentice's purse, and how you gave it back to him, and how glad he was, and how glad you were."