"What do you want?"
"Open the door, Master! I have something important to tell you."
Martin jumps out of bed, strikes a light and hurries on his clothes. A casual glance falls upon Trude's empty bed. Evidently she has dozed off on the sitting-room over her sewing, for it is a long time since she has known sound, healthy sleep.
"What is the matter?" he asks David, who steps into the entrance dripping like a drowned cat.
"Master," he says, blinking from under the peak of his cap, "it is now more than twenty-eight years since I first came to the mill--and your late father already used to be good to me always...."
"And you drag me out of bed in the middle of the night to tell me that?"
"Yes, for to-night when I woke up and heard the rain pelting down, I suddenly remembered with a start that the sluices of the lock were not opened.... Perhaps the water might get blocked up and we could not grind to-morrow."
"Haven't I told you fellows hundreds of times that the sluices need only be opened when the ice is drifting? At high water it only means unnecessary labor."
"Well, I didn't touch them," observes David.
"Then what do you want?"