The gloomy landscape lay quiet; for it was Sunday and the road was but little traveled. The smithy also was quiet. Only the door of the workshop stood open as on a working day: Stephen, the smith, never closed it all the year round. Neither was there any sign of life inside the house; and yet there were three people sitting in the living room, and a fourth, Katharine, the maid, had just left the room and gone into the kitchen. At the long, deal table, dark with age, sat the three, Stephen, the smith, Maria, his wife, and the blond Ludwig, his brother. In the dark room reigned the same gloomy desolation that lay over the surrounding landscape. If one stepped from outside into the bare living room, the strange similarity of the one with the other, would strike one like a blow in the face. There were the bare, sooty, whitewashed walls, the grimy floor, a black stove, clumsy, dark colored chairs, a rough table, a chest of drawers to match, with a soiled crocheted cover on it. There sat these people, with three tin plates and a steaming platter before them. At the head of the table sat the smith, in a strong chair with hard wooden arms, which creaked whenever Stephen moved, for he was as heavy as lead. His tall form, as strong as oak, was surmounted by a head covered with crisp curling black hair. His chin was framed by a short, thick, woolly beard, and his eyebrows and moustache stood out from his face like black tufts of hair. The skin on his face was red as if it had been toughened by fire, and it was furrowed by wrinkles and scars. His forehead, which seemed like a rock, was more marked by wrinkles than his cheeks by scars; a red streak ran across his blunt, thick nose. One eye was black and most unfriendly looking, while the other eye was lacking; the half-closed eyelid hung over the empty, inflamed socket. [Illustration: ERNST ZAHN] The smith sat erect, and his hairy right hand lay on the well-worn old Bible, from which he read every evening before supper. His two companions at table sat with strange humility at each side of the smith. Even now when the maid had left the room, all was still, as if no one could breathe. At last Ludwig, the smith's brother, pushed his chair back angrily and started to rise from the table. "I will not sit here any longer," he exclaimed. His face was fair and young by contrast with the other, his figure slenderer, and more supple, and his ways more refined, such as one brings back from foreign lands. But his features resembled Stephen's, and his hair and beard were thick and wavy like the other's, only they were blond, beautiful silvery blond.