Like this shadow, he thought, holding the hatchet and waiting a chance to bring it down, was that old sin. There was no path along which it did not follow him. Where he was, it was, too. In this hour it would not tolerate for a moment that he should forget it. He looked at the clock. Ten minutes past eleven; and still there was no sound of the carriage coming.
He rose and went out on tiptoe up to the dyke to look round. As he came to where his mare was standing, he saw with alarm that its smoking body was convulsed with cold shivers.
"Well to be born a landed proprietor," he reflected. "If I was my groom this negligence would cost me my situation and bread."
Hurriedly he went back and found in a corner of the kitchen a patchwork square such as the poor people use instead of carpet. In this he wrapped the shaking animal, after he had dried its legs and flanks with a towel.
Far and wide darkness and silence reigned. Only on the other side of the stream a torchlight came and went, and reappeared in another place. Probably nocturnal crab-catchers were abroad. The mist had thickened, and appeared to be heavy on the river. Bluish-white tags detached themselves now and then, and melted in the starry sky, or hung about the bushes and shrubs, whose blurred blackness rose out of a milky surface. He heard a soft trickling sound coming from the trees near. The dew was falling. He shivered in his damp clothes.
"God be praised that I have got her safe," he thought, and turned back to the house. As he stepped softly over the threshold, he fancied he heard Hertha speaking his name. He stood still in astonishment.
"Leo ... my dear, dear, dear Leo!"
He had never heard any words in his life so fervid, so full of awed and hesitating tenderness.
But the problem was soon solved. She was sitting on the oak stump, bending down caressing the dog whose head rested between her feet, which were now shod in stockings and wooden shoes.
He was inwardly vexed, and laughed. But she, when she heard him coming, sprang up with a cry as if she had been doing something very wrong.