The mother sat silent for a time, but after awhile she said:
"You've referred him to Crappy Zachy. It was at Crappy Zachy's that
Josenhans's boy was boarded out."
Thus her pronouncing the name aloud showed that her former remembrances were dawning upon her; and now she became conscious what those remembrances were. And her mind often reverted to them during the events that were soon to occur, and which we are about to relate.
"I don't know what you're talking about," said the farmer. "What's the child to you? Why don't you say that I did the thing wisely?"
"Yes, yes, it was wisely done," the wife acquiesced. But the tardy praise did not satisfy the old man, and he went out grumbling.
A certain apprehension that things might go wrong with his boy after all, and that perhaps he had been in too great a hurry, made the farmer gruff, for the present, toward everybody about him.
CHAPTER XIV
THE RIDER ON THE WHITE HORSE
On the evening of the same day that John had ridden away from Zumarshofen, Crappy Zachy came to Farmer Rodel's house and sat with the proprietor in the back room for a long time, reading a letter to him in a low voice.
"You must give me a hundred crowns if I put this business through, and I want that down in writing," said Crappy Zachy.