Adler jumped up, slipped through the garden gate and ran into the fields. The pastor did not know what to do. He returned to the villa, feeling that Adler ought to be watched; but the servants were afraid of their master. He sent for the old book-keeper, and told him he feared the mill-owner had gone out of his mind and run away.
"Oh, that doesn't mean anything," said the book-keeper; "he will tire himself out and come back in a better frame of mind. He often does that when he is upset."
The hours passed and evening came, but the old cotton-spinner did not appear. Never had there been anything like the present excitement in the factory. Gosławski's death had shaken them, brought home to them the wrongs they were suffering, and set them against their merciless employer. But now their feelings were of a different kind.
The first impression that Ferdinand's sudden death made upon the mill hands was dismay and fright. They felt as if a thunderbolt had struck the factory and it were trembling in its foundations, as if the sun had stood still in the sky. Ferdinand dead? He—so young and strong, a man who had never had to work, never attended to a machine—the son of their almighty employer? Quicker than a miserable workman like Gosławski, he had perished, shot like a hare! To these poor, simple, dependent people Adler was a severe deity, and more powerful than the State. They were seized with fear. It seemed to them that this small landowner and country judge, Zapora, had committed a sacrilege in shooting Ferdinand. How dared he shoot him, before whom even the boldest of them had to give way?
And a strange thing happened. These same people who had daily cursed the mill-owner and his son now cursed his destroyer. Some of them shouted that this fiend ought to be shot like a dog. But had the "fiend" suddenly appeared in their midst, they would certainly have run away.
As the discussions went on, some of the foremen explained that Zapora had not murdered Ferdinand, but that there had been a fight, and Ferdinand had been the first to shoot. It even transpired that the cause had been a quarrel about the workpeople—that Ferdinand had been killed because he spent the money which had been got by wronging the people. God had punished Adler; their curses had been heard.
Thus within a few hours a legend was formed round the incident. The voice of human blood had gone up to the throne of the Almighty, and a miracle had been worked. They were filled with awe.
What would happen now? Would their employer cease to wrong them? Someone suggested that the machinery should be stopped under these unusual circumstances, but the old book-keeper fell upon him. Stop the machinery and irritate the boss even more, when he is not quite in his right mind? He himself had felt quite odd when the machinery had been stopped before, and they had all gone up to the house. When there is the clatter it makes one feel easier, and one thinks nothing has happened.
The others agreed.
In the evening Adler returned, and entered the office like a ghost. Nobody knew when he had come. He was covered with mud, as if he had been rolling on the ground. His eyes were bloodshot, and his short flaxen hair stood on end: he was gasping for breath. Hurriedly he ran through the offices, snapping his fingers. The frightened clerks pretended to go on with their work. A young man was reading a wire. Adler went up to him, and asked in a quiet though changed voice: