[_Excited whispering and murmuring among the weavers._ END OF THE FIRST ACT THE SECOND ACT _A small room in the house of WILHELM ANSORGE, weaver and cottager in the village of Kaschbach, in the Eulengebirge._ _In this room, which does not measure six feet from the dilapidated wooden floor to the smoke-blackened rafters, sit four people. Two young girls, EMMA and BERTHA BAUMERT, are working at their looms; MOTHER BAUMERT, a decrepit old woman, sits on a stool beside the bed, with a winding-wheel in front of her; her idiot son AUGUST sits on a foot-stool, also winding. He is twenty, has a small body and head, and long, spider-like legs and arms._ _Faint, rosy evening light makes its way through two small windows in the right wall, which have their broken panes pasted over with paper or stuffed with straw. It lights up the flaxen hair of the girls, which falls loose on their slender white necks and thin bare shoulders, and their coarse chemises. These, with a short petticoat of the roughest linen, form their whole attire. The warm glow falls on the old woman's face, neck, and breast--a face worn away to a skeleton, with shrivelled skin and sunken eyes, red and watery with smoke, dust, and working by lamplight--a long goitre neck, wrinkled and sinewy--a hollow breast covered with faded, ragged shawls._ _Part of the right wall is also lighted up, with stove, stove-bench, bedstead, and one or two gaudily coloured sacred prints. On the stove rail rags are hanging to dry, and behind the stove is a collection of worthless lumber. On the bench stand some old pots and cooking utensils, and potato parings are laid out on it, on paper, to dry. Hanks of yarn and reels hang from the rafters; baskets of bobbins stand beside the looms. In the back wall there is a low door without fastening. Beside it a bundle of willow wands is set up against the wall, and beyond them lie some damaged quarter-bushel baskets._ _The room is full of sound--the rhythmic thud of the looms, shaking floor and walls, the click and rattle of the shuttles passing back and forward, and the steady whirr of the winding-wheels, like the hum of gigantic bees._ MOTHER BAUMERT [_In a querulous, feeble voice, as the girls stop weaving and bend over their webs._] Got to make knots again already, have you? EMMA [_The elder of the two girls, about twenty-two, tying a broken thread_] It's the plagueyest web, this! BERTHA [_Fifteen._] Yes, it's real bad yarn they've given us this time. EMMA What can have happened to father? He's been away since nine. MOTHER BAUMERT That he has! yes. Where in the wide world c'n he be? BERTHA Don't you worry yourself, mother. MOTHER BAUMERT I can't help it, Bertha lass. [_EMMA begins to weave again._ BERTHA Stop a minute, Emma! EMMA What is it! BERTHA I thought I heard some one. EMMA