“Yes.” he answered, and stared at the magistrate with astonished eyes. So it was on Raudszus, then, that suspicion fell. “Why did you dismiss him?” He related the dreadful occurrence minutely, but took great care that the scene with Douglas, which had preceded, should remain as much as possible in the dark. Now, as the first danger was averted, he had found his tranquillity again. The clerk took notes eagerly, and the magistrate raised his eyebrows, as if all were already clear to him. When Paul had ended, he made a sign to the gendarme, who turned round silently, and walked off on the way to Helenenthal. “Now for your father,” said the magistrate; “is he in a state to be examined?” “Let me see,” answered Paul, and he went into the sick-room. He found his father sitting erect in his bed; his eyes sparkled, and on his features there were signs of ill-suppressed fury. “Let them come,” he called out to Paul; “it is all nothing but fiddlesticks--they do not dare to accuse the real one--but let them come in.” He, too, related the scene of the struggle; but just what Paul had concealed, from shame--the quarrel with Douglas, and the setting-on of the dog--he dwelt on before the strangers with boastful loquacity. The magistrate scratched his head, thoughtfully, and his clerk noted everything down eagerly. When Meyerhofer came to the moment in which he ought to have spoken of his son’s interference, he was silent. He shot a glance at him, in which a world of defiance and anger flamed. “And what more?” asked the magistrate. “I am an old man,” he muttered between his teeth; “do not force me to confess my own ignominy.” The magistrate was satisfied. When he asked the old man whether his suspicion had not already fallen on Michel Raudszus, he chuckled mysteriously to himself and murmured, “He may have furnished the hand, the miserable hand, but--” he stopped. “But?” “It is a pity, sir, that justice wears a bandage over her eyes,” he answered, with a sneering laugh. “I have nothing more to add.” Magistrate and clerk looked at each other, shaking their heads; then the examination was closed. “Will Michel Raudszus be arrested?” Paul asked the gentlemen before they got into their carriage. “Let us hope that has been done already,” the magistrate answered. “He has made all sorts of suspicious allusions when drunk, and what we have learned from you is more than enough evidence to begin a trial against him. Of course many things will still have to be cleared up.” Then they drove away. Paul stared after the carriage for a long time. The last words of the magistrate had awakened his anxiety anew, and while weeks were passing and the first steps towards the trial were taken, he sat trembling nervously at home, just as if the verdict would crush him and him only.