Vreni now sighed deeply and murmured: "Come, Sali, I must be going now."
And both rose and left the cornfield hand in hand, but at the same instant they spied Vreni's father. With the idle curiosity of the person without useful employment he had been speculating, from the moment he had met Sali hours before, what the young man might be wanting all alone in the village. Remembering the occurrence of the previous day, he finally, strolling slowly towards the town, had hit upon the right cause, merely as the result of venom and suspicion. And no sooner had his suspicion taken on a definite shape, when he, in the middle of a Seldwyla street, turned back and reached the village. There he had vainly searched for Vreni everywhere, at home and in the meadow and all around in the hedges. With increasing restlessness he had now sought her right near by in the cornfield, and when picking up there Vreni's small vegetable basket, he had felt sure of being on the right track, spying about, when suddenly he perceived the two children issuing from the corn itself.
They stood there as if turned to stone. Marti himself also for a moment did not move, and stared at them with evil looks, pale as lead. But then he started to curse them like a fiend, and used the vilest language toward the young man. He made a vicious grab at him, attempting to throttle him. Sali instantly wrested himself loose, and sprang back a few paces, so as to be out of the reach of the old man, who acted like one demented. But when he perceived that Marti instead of himself now took hold of the trembling girl, dealing her a violent blow in the face, then seizing her by the back of her hair, trying to drag her along and mistreat her further, he stepped up once more. Without reflecting at all he picked up a rock and struck the old man with it against the side of the head, half in fear of what the maniac meant to do to Vreni, and half in self-defense. Marti after the blow stumbled a step or two, and then fell in a heap on a pile of stones, pulling his daughter down with him in so doing. Sali freed her hair from the rough grasp of the unconscious man, and helped the girl to her feet. But then he stood lifeless, not knowing what to say or do.
The girl seeing her father lying prone on the ground like dead, put her hands to her face, shuddered and whispered: "Have you killed him?"
Sali silently nodded his head, and Vreni shrieked: "Oh, God, oh, God! It is my father! The poor man!"
And quite out of her senses she knelt down alongside of him, lifted up his head and began to examine his hurt. But there was no flow of blood, nor any other trace of injury. She let the limp body drop to the ground again. Sali put himself on the other side of the unconscious old man, and both of them stared helplessly at the pale and motionless face of Marti. They were silent and their hands dropped.
At last Sali remarked: "Perhaps he is not dead at all. I don't think he is dead. That blow can never have killed him."
Vreni tore a leaf off one of the wild roses near her, and held it before the mouth of her father. The leaf fluttered a little.
"He is still alive," she cried, "Run to the village, Sali, and get assistance."
When Sali sprang up and was about to run off, she stretched out her hand towards him, and cried: "Don't come back with the others and say nothing as to how he came by his injury. I shall keep silent and betray nothing."