"Jesus, Mary!" she made the sign of the cross and folded her hands. "A sin!" Why, that was a crime! Her William a criminal? That was almost enough to make you laugh! "Ha, ha!" She laughed convulsively: "No, constable, William never does anything of that kind."
"Come along," said the constable, shoving William out of the door. "We shall find out about that. If the fellow has not done it, they will send him back home again before very long!"
Indeed they would! Of this she was quite certain.
* * * * * *
But William did not come as soon as Widow Driesch had expected. Four times she had already been at the chairman's house to find out about it, and on the street and in the fields she shouted after him, "Hey, Nicholas, when is William coming home?"
But he too could tell her nothing. He only shrugged, and consoled her, when he saw her anxious face and expectant eyes, with the unvarying words, "Do not be so hasty, Katie, he will soon come back!"
Meanwhile four weeks had come and gone. From the grove of fir-trees near the village went forth an extraordinary odor of pitch; slow-running, amber colored streaks had oozed from the shaggy trunks; every drop of moisture seemed to have evaporated from the trees. In the stillness of the August afternoon one could hear the falling of needles and the crackling of twigs and branches. The sun had glowed too ardently overhead.
A mealy odor came from the fields; the grain had been cut. It lay in swathes on the ground; the women gathered, the men bound it into sheaves, and the children, who now were at liberty to pass by the closed door of the schoolhouse, ran about over the stubble and collected the stray ears. The hammering of scythes after the day's work was done, this monotonous village music, had ceased; in its stead could now be heard by day the creaking of ox carts over the hardened clayey road, while cries of "gee," "haw" and the cracking of whips woke the echoes in the glimmering air above the fields.
All the people were in the fields--all but Katherine Driesch; she had no harvest to gather. Quietly she sat in her cottage and heard, when the rumble of the outgoing wagons had died away, nothing but the buzzing of flies and the crackling of the brush-fire on her hearth. She kept the fire going as always; for when he came home she wished him to find things to his liking. And as she sat there, her idle hands in her lap--she could not work; what should she do, why should she do anything?--he was not there--the thoughts passed through her mind, merciful heaven, what if they did something to William! How long were they going to keep him in jail? She no longer put faith in Nicholas--he was deceiving her, in spite of his gray hair. He avoided her; yesterday evening she had plainly seen it.
She had run up to him as he was striding home in front of his loaded harvest wagon with his pitchfork over his shoulder.