The living room in old BERND'S cottage. The room is fairly large; it has grey walls and an old-fashioned whitewashed ceiling supported by visible beams. A door in the background leads to the kitchen, one at the left to the outer hall. To the right are two small windows. A yellow chest of drawers stands between the two windows; upon it is set an unlit kerosene lamp; a mirror hangs above it on the wall. In the left corner a great stove; in the right a sofa, covered with oil-cloth, a table with a cloth on it and a hanging lamp above it. Over the sofa on the wall hangs a picture with the Biblical subject: "Suffer little children to come unto me"; beneath it a photograph of BERND, showing him as a conscript, and several of himself and his wife. In the foreground, to the left, stands a china closet, filled with painted cups, glasses, etc. A Bible is lying on the chest of drawers; over the door to the hall hangs a chromolithograph of "Christ with the crown of thorns." Mull curtains hang in front of the windows. Each of four or five chairs of yellow wood has its own place. The whole room makes a neat but very chilly impression. Several Bibles and hymnals lie on the china closet. On the door-post of the door to the hall hangs a collecting-box.
It is seven o'clock in the evening of the same day on which the events in Act Four have taken place. The door that leads to the hall as well as the kitchen door stands open. A gloomy dusk fills the house.
Voices are heard outside, and a repeated knocking at the window. Thereupon a voice speaks through the window.
THE VOICE
Bernd! Isn't there a soul at home? Let's be goin' to the back door!
A silence ensues. Soon, however, the back door opens and voices and steps are heard in the hall. In the door that leads to the hall appear KLEINERT and ROSE BERND. The latter is obviously exhausted and leans upon him.
ROSE
[Weak and faint.] No one's at home. 'Tis all dark.
KLEINERT
I can't be leavin' you alone this way now!