He rose. A word of forgiveness might perhaps have saved him! Perhaps! Who knows! He staggered back into the bedroom. Christiane did not see him go, but she felt that his presence no longer profaned the place in which lay the sacred image of her maternal sorrow. Weeping softly, she sank down over her dead child.
In the meantime Apollonius had begun the decorating of the tower-roof of St. George's. He had built a scaffold, fastened his ladder to the broach-post, put a hempen ring on it, attached his tackle to the ring and hung his swinging-seat on the pulley. The tin ornamentation, which consisted of single long pieces, was intended to represent two garlands festooned around the spire.
Apollonius was industrious at his work. The mastertinsmith, who was anxious to see his decorations completed as soon as possible, had less ground to complain of Apollonius than the latter had to be dissatisfied with him. At first the master urged Apollonius; soon Apollonius had to drive the master on. A part of the top garland which was to hang in a festoon over the door in the roof was lacking. Apollonius could not finish his work until he had the material for it. A neighboring village required his services for minor repairs. Leaving his tackle hanging from the tower of St. George's he went to Brambach.
The next day old Valentine knocked at the living-room door. He had already been there several times and gone away again. His entire being expressed uneasiness. He was so preoccupied with something that he had on his mind that he thought he must have failed to hear the answer to his knock and laid his ear to the key-hole as if he assumed that it must still be there to hear if he only listened hard enough. His anxiety aroused him from his absent-mindedness. He knocked a second and a third time and, still receiving no answer, plucked up courage to open the door and go in. The young wife had avoided him for some time. She did so now, too, but today he had to speak to her. She intentionally sat at some distance from the windows, near the bedroom door. The old man did not perceive that she was as uneasy as he, and that his presence made her even more so. He apologized for his intrusion. When she made a movement to leave the room, he assured her that he would not remain long and that he would not have forced himself upon her had he not been impelled to do so by something which was perhaps very important. He hoped that it was not so, but still, it might be. She listened and looked more and more anxiously now at the windows, now at the door. Her demeanor showed plainly that she hoped if he had anything to say to her he would say it as quickly as he could.
Valentine began: "Master Fritz is on the roof of St. George's. I saw him just now in the church-yard."
"And did he look this way? Did he see you coming into the house?" asked Christiane breathlessly.
"God forbid!" replied the old man. "He is working like the devil today, not even thinking of anything to eat and drink. When a man works like that—" Valentine stopped and completed the sentence to himself—"he has some end in view." Christiane was silent. She was struggling with the desire to confide her whole anxiety to the faithful old soul. He saw nothing of this. "Our neighbor, over there," he continued, "has times, you know, when he cannot sleep at all. The night before Master Apollonius went to Brambach he was at his kitchen window and saw somebody sneaking from the back of our house into the shed." He did not say whom the neighbor had seen, he probably expected the young wife to ask. But she had not even heard his story. "The previous evening," he went on, "before Master Apollonius left for Brambach, he tried to get together the things he wanted to take with him; he examined everything, as he always does, but he could not make up his mind what to take. And it is so strange that Master Fritz has become so industrious all of a sudden."
Apollonius' name roused Christiane; she listened as the old man continued: "It occurred to me for the first time, just now, when our neighbor told me that somebody had crept into the shed. I wondered what he could be wanting there, and at night too. And when I looked up and saw Master Fritz working so hard, an uneasy feeling came over me and drove me into the shed as if I were being chased with a stick. There, I imagined what any one who had sneaked in there might have done. First I saw the ax that belongs with the other tools lying near the door. I thought to myself: did he do anything with the ax? And again I imagined what any one who had crept in there at night might have done with it. It occurred to me that he might have done something to the ladders. But I found nothing wrong there. Nor was there anything wrong with the swinging-seat that still lay there. Then I began to look at the pulleys and last of all at the tackle. It seemed as if one of the ropes had been worn a little by rubbing against something hard. I thought to myself: 'that often happens,' and was about to lay it down again, but then I thought: 'there is nothing else wrong, and if somebody crept in here at night he meant to do something, and if he had the ax then he did something with that.' I looked a little closer and—merciful Heavens!—the rope had been cut into in several different places. I threw it over the beam and hung on it; the cuts gaped open. I believe if the seat were hung on it the rope would break." The old man had become quite pale. Christiane hung breathlessly on his every word; she had fallen back in her chair and could scarcely speak.
"It was not so the evening before," he continued. "Master Apollonius has an eye for every detail. He would have discovered it. I think the person who cut the rope watched Master Apollonius as he examined everything, and thought he would not look them over again before he used them. That is the reason why he crept in at night."
"Valentine!" cried the young wife, seizing him by the shoulders, half as if she wanted to compel him to tell the truth, half as if to support herself, "he did not take it with him? Valentine, tell me!"