Only to the dismal Howdahs spring would not come. Paul had, indeed, made it possible to procure corn for sowing, and a wooden building already stood erected on the place of ruin, but the hope for better times had still not come. Dull and joylessly he did his duty, and deeper and deeper the lines became traced upon his forehead. He brooded over things by himself more than ever, and the fear that he had committed perjury weighed heavily upon him. Months elapsed before it was clear to him that his grievance was nothing but idle trifling which originated in his over-anxious stickling at words. He reflected thoroughly on the question which the president had addressed to him, and came to the conclusion that he could not have answered otherwise. It was, indeed, the first time that he had penetrated into his neighbor’s garden; what had once taken place on a blissful moonlight night had happened on this side of the fence. What was that to the gentlemen of the law-courts? “No; I am not a perjurer,” he said to himself; “I am only a coward, a simpleton, who is afraid of the mere shadow of a deed. Ought I not proudly and joyfully to have sworn a false oath for Elsbeth’s sake? Then I should be somebody; then I should have done something, while now I live on, torpid and discouraged, a farm laborer-nothing more.” And in the brain of this “pattern boy” arose the fervent wish to be a great criminal, just because he felt compelled to prove his own individuality. The hours which he had passed on the roof and in the witness-box now seemed to him the ideal of all earthly bliss, and the harder he worked the idler and more useless he fancied himself. His father was still kept to his chair, which to all appearances he would never again be able to leave, for his broken leg had healed badly. Idle and grumbling he sat in his corner, turning over an old almanac without interest, and abusing every one who came near him. Only for Paul he cherished a sort of involuntary respect; he grumbled to himself as often as he saw him, but did not dare to contradict him openly. And his mother? She had grown a little more weary, a little quieter, otherwise there was hardly any change perceptible in her; but those who observed more attentively could hear a rustle in the air, as though a vulture were hovering over the Howdahs and drawing its circles ever closer and closer, and preparing to pounce down one day on its prey. She herself heard the rustle very well; she knew, too, what it signified; but she remained silent, as she had been silent all her life. And happiness had not come yet. At the beginning of April she took to her bed. “General weakness,” the doctor said, and recommended a visit to a place where there were iron baths. She smiled, and begged him not to speak of a watering-place to any one, for she knew that Paul would work himself to death to make this course of treatment possible for her.