Somewhat ill at ease, the boy looked aside slyly and laughed. "At twilight before supper she tells her beads once—then I have not yet returned with the cows; and again in bed—then I usually fall asleep."
"Well, well, my boy!" These last words were spoken under the sheltering branches of a broad beech-tree which arched the entrance to the glen. It was now quite dark and the new, moon shone in the sky, but its weak rays served only to lend a strange appearance to the objects they occasionally touched through an aperture between the branches. Frederick followed close behind his uncle; his breath came fast and, if one could have distinguished his features, one would have noticed in them an expression of tremendous agitation caused by imagination rather than terror. Thus both trudged ahead sturdily, Simon with the firm step of the hardened wanderer, Frederick unsteadily and as if in a dream. It seemed to him that everything was in motion, and that the trees swayed in the lonely rays of the moon now towards one another, now away. Roots of trees and slippery places where water had gathered made his steps uncertain; several times he came near falling. Now some distance ahead the darkness seemed to break, and presently both entered a rather large clearing. The moon shone down brightly and showed that only a short while ago the axe had raged here mercilessly. Everywhere stumps of trees jutted up, some many feet above the ground, just as it had been most convenient to cut through them in haste; the forbidden work must have been interrupted unexpectedly, for directly across the path lay a beech-tree with its branches rising high above it, and its leaves, still fresh, trembling in the evening breeze. Simon stopped a moment and surveyed the fallen tree-trunk with interest. In the centre of the open space stood an old oak, broad in proportion to its height. A pale ray of light that fell on its trunk through the branches showed that it was hollow, a fact that had probably saved it from the general destruction.
Here Simon suddenly clutched the boy's arm. "Frederick, do you know that tree? That is the broad oak." Frederick started, and with his cold hands clung to his uncle. "See," Simon continued, "here Uncle Franz and Huelsmeyer found your father, when without confession and extreme unction he had gone to the Devil in his drunkenness."
"Uncle, uncle!" gasped Frederick.
"What's coming over you? I should hope you are not afraid? Devil of a boy, you're pinching my arm! Let go, let go!" He tried to shake the boy off. "On the whole your father was a good soul; God won't be too strict with him. I loved him as well as my own brother." Frederick let go his uncle's arm; both walked the rest of the way through the forest in silence, and soon the village of Brede lay before them with its mud houses and its few better brick houses, one of which belonged to Simon.
The next evening Margaret sat at the door with her flax for fully an hour, awaiting her boy. It had been the first night she had passed without hearing her child's breathing beside her, and still Frederick did not come. She was vexed and anxious, and yet knew that there was no reason for being so. The clock in the tower struck seven; the cattle returned home; still he was not there, and she had to get up to look after the cows.
When she reëntered the dark kitchen, Frederick was standing on the hearth; he was bending forward and warming his hands over the coal fire. The light played on his features and gave him an unpleasant look of leanness and nervous twitching. Margaret stopped at the door; the child seemed to her so strangely changed.
"Frederick, how's your uncle?" The boy muttered a few unintelligible words and leaned close against the chimney.
"Frederick, have you forgotten how to talk? Boy, open your mouth! Don't you know I do not hear well with my right ear?" The child raised his voice and began to stammer so that Margaret failed to understand anything.
"What are you saying? Greeting from Master Semmler? Away again? Where? The cows are at home already. You bad boy, I can't understand you. Wait, I'll have to see if you have no tongue in your mouth!" She made a few angry steps forward. The child looked up to her with the pitiful expression of a poor, half-grown dog that is learning to sit up on his hind legs. In his fear he began to stamp his feet and rub his back against the chimney.