When Carl at length became strong and commenced labor, he hoped speedily to claim his betrothed, and was waiting a favorable opportunity to obtain her father's consent to their marriage. The scars were the only evidence of the suffering he had endured. No bones had been broken, and he was as erect and as vigorous as before the assault. But Carl, most unfortunate of men, was not destined so soon to enjoy the happiness for which he hoped,—the love that had called him back to life. As the robber eagle sits on his cliff, waiting till the hawk has seized the ring-dove, then darts down and beats off the captor, that he may secure for himself the prize,—so Schönfeld, not uninformed of what was going on, stood ready to pounce upon the suitor who should gain Katrine's favor, and sweep the last rival out of the way. An officer in the king's service appeared in the village to draw the conscripts for the army, and the young men trembled like penned-up sheep at the entrance of the blood-stained butcher, not knowing who would be seized for the shambles. The officer had apparently been a friend and companion of Schönfeld's in former days, and passed some time at his house. It was perhaps only a coincidence, but it struck the neighbors as very odd at least, that Carl Proch was the first man drawn for the army. He had no money to hire a substitute, and there was no alternative; he must serve his three years. This last blow was too much for his poor mother. Worn down by her constant assiduity in nursing him, and overcome by the sense of utter desolation, she sunk into her grave, and was buried on the very day that Carl, with the other recruits, was marched off.
What new torture the betrothed Katrine felt is not to be told. Three years were to her an eternity; and her imagination called up such visions of danger from wounds, privations, and disease, that she parted from her lover as though it were forever. The miller found that the light and the melody of his house were gone. Katrine was silent and sorrowful; her frame wasted and her step grew feeble. To all his offers of condolence she made no reply, except to remind him how with tears she had besought his interference in Carl's behalf. She would not be comforted. The father little knew the feeling she possessed; he had thought that her attachment to her rustic lover was only a girlish fancy, and that she would speedily forget him; but now her despairing look frightened him. To the neighbors, who looked inquisitively as he sat by the mill-door, smoking, he complained of the quality of his tobacco, vowing that it made his eyes so tender that they watered upon the slightest whiff.
For six months Schönfeld wisely kept away; that period, he thought, would be long enough to efface any recollection of the absent soldier. Then he presented himself, and, in his usual imperious way, offered his hand to Katrine. The miller was inclined to favor his suit. In wealth and position Schönfeld was first in the village; he would be a powerful ally, and a very disagreeable enemy. In fact, Rauchen really feared to refuse the demand; and he plied his daughter with such argument as he could command, hoping to move her to accept the offer. Katrine, however, was convinced of the truth of her former suspicion, that Carl was a victim of Schönfeld's craft; and her rejection of his proposal was pointed with an indignation which she took no pains to conceal. The old scar showed strangely white in his purple face, as he left the mill, vowing vengeance for the affront.
Rauchen and his daughter were now more solitary than ever. The father had forgotten the roaring stories he used to tell to the neighboring peasants, over foaming flagons of ale, at the little inn; he sat at his mill-door and smoked incessantly. Katrine shunned the festivities in which she was once queen, and her manner, though kindly, was silent and reserved; she went to church, it is true, but she wore a look of settled sorrow that awed curiosity and even repelled sympathy. But scandal is a plant that needs no root in the earth; like the houseleek, it can thrive upon air; and those who separate themselves the most entirely from the world are apt, for that very reason, to receive the larger share of its attention. The village girls looked first with pity, then with wonder, and at length with aversion, upon the gentle and unfortunate Katrine. Careless as she was with regard to public opinion, she saw not without pain the altered looks of her old associates, and before long she came to know the cause. A cruel suspicion had been whispered about, touching her in a most tender point. It was not without reason, so the gossip ran, that she had refused so eligible an offer of marriage Schönfeld's. The story reached the ears of Rauchen, at last. With a fierce energy, such as he had never exhibited before, he tracked it from cottage to cottage, until he came to Schönfeld's housekeeper, who refused to give her authority. The next market-day Rauchen encountered the former suitor and publicly charged him with the slander, in such terms as his baseness deserved. Schönfeld, thrown off his guard by the sudden attack, struck his adversary a heavy blow; but the miller rushed upon him, and left him to be carried home, a bundle of aches and bruises. After this the tongues of the gossips were quiet; no one was willing to answer for guesses or rumors at the end of Rauchen's staff; and the father and daughter resumed their monotonous mode of life.
The three years at length passed, and Carl Proch returned home,—a trifle more sedate, perhaps, but the same noble, manly fellow. How warmly he was received by the constant Katrine it is not necessary to relate. Rauchen was not disposed to thwart his long-suffering daughter any further; and with his consent the young couple were speedily married, and lived in his house. The gayety of former years came back; cheerful songs and merry laughter were heard in the lately silent rooms. Rauchen himself grew younger, especially after the birth of a grandson, and often resumed his old place at the inn, telling the old stories with the old gusto over the ever-welcome ale. But one morning, not long after, he was found dead in his bed; a smile was on his face, and his limbs were stretched out as in peaceful repose.
There was no longer any tie to bind Carl to his native village. All his kin, as well as Katrine's, were in the grave. He was not bred a miller, and did not feel competent to manage the mill. Besides, his mind had received new ideas while he was in the army. He had heard of countries where men were equal before the laws, where the peasant owed no allegiance but to society. The germ of liberty had been planted in his breast, and he could no longer live contented with the rank in which he had been born. At least he wished that his children might grow up free from the chilling influences that had fallen upon him. At his earnest persuasion, Katrine consented that the mill should be sold, and soon after, with his wife and child, he went to Bremen and embarked for America.
* * * * *
We must now follow the absconding Stolzen, who, with his bag of thalers, had made good his escape into England. He lived in London, where he found society among his countrymen. His habitual shrewdness never deserted him, and from small beginnings he gradually amassed a moderate fortune. His first experiment in proposing for a wife satisfied him, but in a great city his sensual nature was fully developed. His brutal passions were unchecked; conscience seemed to have left him utterly. At length he began to think about quitting London. He was afraid to return to Germany, for, as he had left Carl to all appearance dead, he thought the officers of the law would seize him. He determined to go to Australia, and secured a berth in a clipper ship bound for Melbourne, but some accident prevented his reaching the pier in season; the vessel sailed without him, and was never heard of afterwards. Then he proposed to buy an estate in Canada; but the owner failed to make his appearance at the time appointed for the negotiation, and the bargain was not completed. At last he took passage for New York, whither a Hebrew acquaintance of his had gone, a year or two before, and was established as a broker. Upon arriving in that city, Stolzen purchased of an agent a tract of land in a Western State, situated on the shore of Lake Michigan; and after reserving a sum of money for immediate purposes, he deposited his funds with his friend, the broker, and started westward. He travelled the usual route by rail, then a short distance in a mail-coach, which carried him within six miles of his farm. Leaving his luggage to be sent for, he started to walk the remaining distance. It was a sultry day, and the prairie road was anything but pleasant to a pedestrian unaccustomed to heat and dust. After walking less than an hour, he determined to stop at a small house near the road, for rest, and some water to quench his thirst; but as he approached, the baying hounds, no less than the squalid children about the door, repelled him, and he went on to the next house. He now turned down a green lane, between rows of thrifty trees, to a neat log-cabin, whose nicely-plastered walls and the regular fence inclosing it testified to the thrift and good taste of the owner. He knocked; all was still. Again, and thirsty as he was, he was on the point of leaving, when he heard a step within. He waited; the door opened, and before him stood——Katrine!
She did not know him; but he had not forgotten that voluptuous figure nor those melting blue eyes. He preferred his requests, looking through the doorway at the same time to make sure that she had no protector. Katrine brought the stranger a gourd of water, and offered him a chair. She did not see the baleful eyes he threw after her as she went about her household duties. Stolzen had dropped from her firmament like a fallen and forgotten star. Secure in her unsuspecting innocence, she chirruped to her baby and resumed her sewing.
That evening, when Carl Proch returned from his field, after his usual hard day's labor, he found his wife on the floor, sobbing, speechless, and the child, unnoticed, crying in his cradle. His dog sat by the hearth with a look of almost intelligent sympathy, and whined as his master entered the room. He raised Katrine and held her in his arms like a child, covered her face with kisses, and implored her to speak. She seemed to be in a fearful dream, and shrunk from some imagined danger in the extremest terror. Gradually her sobs became less frequent, her tremors ceased, and she smiled upon the manly face that met hers, as though she had only suffered from an imaginary fright. But when she felt her hair floating upon her shoulders, saw the almost speaking face of the dog, Bruno, and became conscious of the cries of the neglected child, the wave of agony swept over her again, and she could utter only broken ejaculations. As word after word came from her lips, the unhappy husband's flesh tingled; his hair stiffened with horror; every nerve seemed to be strung with a new and maddening tension. There was for him no such thing as fatigue, no distance, no danger,—no law, no hereafter, no God. All thought and feeling were drowned in one wild desire for vengeance,—vengeance swift, terrible, and final.