All this trouble about Renti lay heavy on Gretchen's heart. The boy was kept out of school the rest of the week. The farmer thought he could thus keep better watch of him and prevent his running away, until he was settled in the new life and trained to its ways. But every day—usually it was dark before he got a chance—he would manage to slip out, and away he would shoot like an arrow. The later it was when he escaped, the later would he come home and the harsher would be the punishment that awaited him. On Saturday evening, after the boy had been chastised as usual and sent to bed without supper, the farmer told him: "I will give you one more week's trial. If you do not improve I will send you away."
The next day the woman said to Renti: "This afternoon you may go out with my permission; but see that you come back at a reasonable time for supper, as befits decent people."
Renti went away right after dinner, but he did not go to The Alders. He thought the family had probably heard of his running away, and he was ashamed to go. And perhaps Gretchen's father and her brothers would look accusingly at him and make him feel that he was not welcome. He felt the same way about the people at Lindenhof, and not for anything would he have gone into their house or let them see him.
It had begun to snow a little, and a cold, sharp wind was whirling the flakes about him in eddies.
Renti ran up to the meadow and sat down on the stone wall. He stayed there until it became dark, although he was shivering with cold and the wind almost blew him off the wall. When it was so dark that no one could see him, he went down to Lindenhof and wandered about the barn and the stables like some restless spirit condemned to leave a place and yet unable to tear itself away. Several times he started toward home; then he would turn back and go all around the barn once more, laying his ear to the cracks and trying to hear some dear, familiar sound from his cows or his chickens. Finally he tore himself away and went over to The Alders. At the corner of the barn he waited a long, long time to see whether Gretchen would come out; but she was nowhere to be seen, so at last he ran off home.
The following week passed as the previous one had. If on any one evening Renti found no chance to run away, then he slipped out so much earlier the next day. Several times he came home so late that the farmer could not go to bed at his usual time. Then the boy was punished with exceeding severity, so that the farmer thought, "Surely this will cure him." But it did not cure him.
On the second Sunday, when Renti came down in the morning, the farmer said: "You may go as soon as you have finished breakfast. The alms commissioner knows you are coming; I told him about you."
The wife packed his clothes in a bundle, and when Renti rose from the table she gave him his package, and he went accompanied by the parting injunction from both the farmer and his wife to "be better in his next place than he had been with them."
Renti went on his way utterly indifferent; he did not care where he might be sent next. When he reached the commissioner's house the man had not yet returned from church, so he waited. Presently the man appeared, and seeing Renti at his door, at once exclaimed: "What's this I hear about you? A fine record you are making! You'd better try to stay in your new place, for I don't know what will become of you after the next three months. The parish will not pay for you after that; so think over the matter a little. Now you are to go to the shoemaker's."
Renti felt that the commissioner did not feel friendly toward him, as he had formerly. He turned away in embarrassment and went on.