"What are the servants talking about, to-day? I am ashamed to go among them, and I dare not say a word, for fear they will answer me with insult and abuse. I hear that people from all over the valley have gone to the city to-day, to see Landolin sitting on the prisoner's seat. Yes, there he sits, and has to let the gentlemen of the court say everything they can think of right in his face. And everybody rejoices in it, and yet they themselves are--God forgive me! Yes, so it is, if anything is wrong with oneself, one tries to find something wrong with one's neighbor. There stands your arm-chair. Who knows if you will ever sit in it again, and rest your strong arms and good hands! When will the door open again and you come in? Hush! Listen Thoma! Don't you hear something? There is some one at the door! I hear some one breathing. It might be Cushion-Kate, or is it----Open the door!" Even Thoma could not shake off her fear; but summoning her courage, she opened the door, and, with a sigh of relief, cried, "It is Racker." "Come here," said her mother to the dog, coaxingly. "Do you know what is the matter with your master to-day? Will he ever see you, and lay his hand on your head again? Yes, yes; look at me pitifully! If men were as pitiful as you----" "You're right, mother," said Thoma at length. "See, mother, everybody on his way to the field to-day, fills his pitcher at our well, as if there was water nowhere else. They look toward our house as though they took pleasure in our misfortune. I wish I could poison the well, so they would all die! I wish I could poison the whole world!" The mother longed to soothe her daughter, but dared not try. She was thankful that Thoma at least spoke, instead of staring silently before her. And now that Thoma had once broken her silence, she continued: "Mother, I want to go to the city." "You, too, will leave me?" Thoma explained that she would soon return. She only wished to telegraph to Peter, to report to her the verdict as soon as it should be rendered, and she would leave word at the telegraph office for the messenger, the "Galloping Cooper's" brother, to wait all night for the message. Her mother took up her prayer-book, and said: "Well, you may go; but don't hurry too much." "Come along," Thoma called to the dog, and, with him, hastened out of doors. CHAPTER XXV. At the edge of the forest stands a pine tree, with its top bent down. Some say that it was struck by lightning; others say a raven has lighted there so often that his weight and the clutching of his claws have broken it. But the strong-rooted pine grows on. Is Landolin's house such a tree; struck by lightning, and bowed down by dark sorrow? And will it flourish again? Thoma stood in the road, and looked around, as though for the first time she saw that the heavens were blue, and the trees and fields were green. She had to exert herself to remember for what and where she was going.