The knocker gives forth its dull beats. Once--twice, then shuffling footsteps become audible in the entrancehall; the key is turned; a dark yellow ray of light beams out into the moonlight night.
"For heaven's sake, madam, how pale you look!" the maid ejaculates in a terrified voice.... The door closes with a bang.
For a long time Johannes keeps on staring at the place where she has disappeared.--A cold shiver which runs through him from head to foot rouses him at length. Absentmindedly he slinks across the moonlit yard,--strokes the dogs that with joyous barking drag at their chains,--casts an indifferent glance towards the motionless mill-wheel, beneath the shadows of which the waters glide along like glittering snakes. Some indefinable impulse drives him forward and away. The ground of the mill-yard burns beneath his feet. He wanders across the meadows, back to the weir--to the spot where he was sitting with Trude. On the grass there gleams her blue silk shoe, and not far from it lies her long, fine stocking. So she must have limped home with her bare foot and probably is not even conscious of the fact! He breaks into a shrill laugh, takes up both and flings them far into the foaming waters.
Whither shall he turn now? The mill has closed its portals upon him forevermore. Whither can he go now? Shall he lay himself down to rest under some haystack? He cannot sleep even if he does. Stay! He knows of a jolly set of fellows--though he despised them a little while ago, they will just suit him now.
When, at two o'clock in the morning, Martin Rockhammer has shaken himself free of his drinking companions and is stepping, in the happiest of moods, out on to the festival ground, when the bluish-gray light of dawning day is beginning to illumine the doings of these night-birds, he is met by a band of drunken louts, who, singing obscene songs, break in single file through the ranks of the promenading couples. They are headed by the locksmith Garmann, a fellow of bad repute who practices poaching by night and in whose train now follow other good-for-nothing scamps. Intending to turn them out of the place forthwith, Martin steps towards them. But suddenly he stops as if turned to stone; his arms drop down at his sides: there in the midst of this crew, with glassy eyes and drunken gestures staggers his brother Johannes.
"Johannes!" he cries out, horrified.
He starts back; his drink-inflamed face grows ashy pale; a frightened gleam flickers in his eyes--he trembles--he stretches forth his arm as if to ward him off--and staggers back--two--three paces. Martin feels his anger disappear. This picture of misery arouses his pity. He follows after Johannes, and, taking him by the arm, he says in loving tones: "Come, brother; it is late, let us go home." But Johannes shrinks back in horror at the touch of his hand, and fixing his gaze upon him in mortal agony, he says in a hoarse voice: "Leave me--I do not wish to--I do not wish to have anything more to do with you--I am no longer your brother." Martin starts up, clutches with his two hands at the slab of the table near him and then drops down upon the nearest bench as if felled by the stroke of an axe.
Johannes, however, rushes away. The forest closes in upon him.
Henceforth come sad days for the Rockhammer mill.
When Martin reached home on that morning, when he found the whole house quiet, as quiet as a mouse, he took the key of the mill from the wall and slunk off to that melancholy place which he had built up as the temple of his guilt. There his people found him at midday, pale as the whitewashed walls, his head bowed upon his hands, muttering to himself incessantly: "Retribution for Fritz! Retribution for Fritz!" The phantom, the old terrible phantom, which he had thought was laid for evermore, has cast itself upon him anew and is twining its strangling claw about his neck.