How is I to know where all the brats offa junk heaps that witches use in their doin's gets to in the end? Watch the chimney! Maybe it flew outa there on a broomstick.
MRS. JOHN
Paul!—Now it ain't to live! No, outa spite! Now it don' has to live!
Now it's gotta go down under the ground with me!
[With lightning-like rapidity she has run behind the partition and reappears at once with the child and makes for the door. HASSENREUTER and SPITTA throw themselves in front of the desperate woman, intent on saving the child.
HASSENREUTER
Stop! I'll interfere now! I have the right to do so at this point! Whomever the little boy may belong to—so much the worse if its mother has been murdered—it was born on my premises! Forward, Spitta! Fight for it, my boy! Here your propensities come properly into play! Go on! Careful! That's it! Bravo! Be as careful as though it were the Christ child! Bravo! That's it! You yourself are at liberty, Mrs. John. We don't restrain you. You must only leave us the little boy.
MRS. JOHN rushes madly out.
SCHIERKE
Here you stays!