“Help! Help!” shouted Adolph Schneider, who still stood upon the platform.
At first the prospect of a fight between the two influential men of the colony had suggested possibilities likely to redound into material good for himself, and he had been content to play the part of listener and spectator. Now, as he looked at Gerson Brandt, he no longer saw the school-master, but a man tall, sinewy, and muscular—a man in whose eye flashed anger and whose pose revealed an unsuspected strength.
“Help! Help!” he shouted again.
Gerson Brandt assisted his adversary to rise. The elder was stunned; the school-master pushed him into a chair, where he sat dazed and silent. Just then Hans Peter came shuffling in at the door. He walked as if he had heard an ordinary summons.
“Didst thou call?” he asked, addressing the Herr Doktor. His pale eyes rested on the figure of Karl Weisel, and there was just the faintest gleam of understanding in them. Before Adolph Schneider had a chance to answer, a rustle of skirts and a light step was heard on the stair that led from Wilhelm Kellar’s room.
“Hath anything gone amiss here?” asked Walda, throwing open the door and standing on the threshold. With a woman’s intuition she saw that there had been some quarrel.
“Be not alarmed,” said Gerson Brandt, walking down a side aisle at the end of the long benches. “The elder, Karl Weisel, accused me of stealing the Bible and of bearing false witness concerning it. The man in me resented the insult. He refused to apologize, and I struck him. Even now I am sorry that I should have hurt one of my fellow-colonists.”
“Nay, Gerson Brandt, thou didst forget that the Lord hath said, ‘Vengeance is Mine,’” cried Walda, going near to Gerson Brandt. “It is not like thee to let human passions triumph.”
“This will cost Gerson Brandt his place as an elder,” declared Karl Weisel, coming to himself enough to smooth his ruffled hair and settle his loosened stock.
“This is bad, indeed!” exclaimed Adolph Schneider. “In all my years of colony life I have never known one man in Zanah to raise his hand against a brother-colonist.”