Then he sank back again.
From that day forward Paul was master in the house.
CHAPTER XIV.
Three weeks had passed since then. Paul worked like a galley-slave. In spite of that a strange unrest was upon him. When he allowed himself a few moments’ repose he could not bear to stay at home. He felt as if the walls were falling in upon him. Then he rambled about on the heath or in the wood, or he lingered near Helenenthal.
“If I should meet Elsbeth I think I should sink into the ground with shame,” he said to himself, and yet he looked about for her everywhere, and trembled with fear and joy when he saw a female figure coming towards him in the distance.
He also began to neglect his night’s rest. As soon as all in the house were asleep he crept away, and often returned only in the bright morning to go to work again with swimming head and weary limbs.
“I will make amends—amends,” he murmured often to himself; and when his scythe hissed through the corn, he said, keeping time with it, “make amends—make amends.” But how to do so was totally vague to him; he did not even know if Douglas had been seriously hurt by the dog’s bite.
Once when he was roving about at twilight on the other side of the wood he saw Michel Raudszus coming from Helenenthal. He carried a spade over his shoulder, on which hung a bundle. Paul looked at him fixedly; he expected to be attacked by him, but the servant only gave him a shy side-glance and a wide berth.