In the maze of darkness through which he somehow lived, there was but one ray of comfort—the Master. Lynn felt, vaguely, that here was something upon which he might lean. He did not perceive that it was his own individuality which Herr Kaufmann had in some way awakened, so prone are we to confuse the person with the thing, the thought with the deed.
Day after day, he tramped over the hills around East Lancaster; day by day, footsore and weary, he sought for peace along those sunlit fields. At night, desperately tired and faint with hunger, he crept home, where he slept uneasily, waking always with that hand of terror clutching at his heart.
He went most frequently to the pile of rocks in the woods, a mile or more from the house. There were no signs upon the bare earth around it; seemingly no one went there but Lynn. Yet the suggestion of an altar was openly made, from the wide ledge at the foundation, where one might kneel, to the cross at the summit, rude, stern, and forbidding, chiselled in the rock.
Here, many times, Lynn had found comfort. Someone else, whose heart swelled, burned, and tried to escape, had cut that cross upon the granite. Thus he came, by slow degrees, into an intimate, invisible companionship.
Herr Kaufmann had ceased to speak of lessons, though Lynn went there sometimes and sat by while he worked. The Master had admitted him to that high fellowship which does not demand speech. For an hour or more, Lynn might sit there, watching, and yet no word would be spoken. As with Dr. Brinkerhoff, there were occasional visits in which nothing was said but “Good afternoon” and “Good-bye.”
Fräulein Fredrika was always busy overhead with her manifold household tasks, and seldom disturbed them by coming into the shop. Lynn wondered if the house was never clean, and once put the question to Herr Kaufmann.
“Mine house is always clean,” he answered, “except down here. Twice in every year, I allow Fredrika to come in mine shop with her cloths and her brush and her pails. The rest of the time, it is mine own. If she could clean here all the time, as upstairs, I think she would be more happy. If you like to come in mine shop when I am not here, I am willing. It is one quiet place where one can rest undisturbed and think of many things. Fredrika would not care.”
Weeks later, Lynn thought of the kindly offer. A storm was coming up, and he remembered that the Master had spoken of driving to another town with Dr. Brinkerhoff. “I have one violin,” he had explained, “which was ordered long ago and which is now finished. While the Herr Doctor visits the sick, I will go on with mine instrument and perhaps obtain one more pupil.”
Fräulein Fredrika answered his ring, and he asked, conventionally, for Herr Kaufmann. “Mine brudder is not home,” she said. “He will have gone away, but I think not for long. You will perhaps come in and wait?”