Then the boy left the room. But the smith sat buried in thought. He scarcely noticed Katharine, as she went to and fro, clearing the table. He could still see the boy's white forehead. And then it seemed to him as if an ugly spot were burning on it, and something within him seemed to say: "You branded him with that sign of shame!" For a moment facts and thoughts seemed to become confused. Then he drew his brows together and thought more intently, and saw everything clearly, as it really was: Not only had he burdened Maria's boy with that name, that shameful name, but he had marked him with the shame itself; for the name awakened the memory of the stain that clung to him from his birth. And if the village children, when they were simple, innocent little things, had made fun of Cain because he had a queer name, unlike anybody else's, now that they had grown bigger just as he had, and already knew more than was good for them, they pointed scornfully at him, not because his name was Cain, but because they knew why he bore that name. But had not he, Stephen Fausch, chosen that it should be so? The injustice that had been done him, he had chosen to nail firmly and solidly in place, and firm and solid it should remain! Two different forces were struggling in Fausch. There was his obstinacy, his untamed will, that he had never curbed in all his life, and together with that, something else, that was quite new, something like pity for the boy, or--who can guess what suddenly arose in revolt against his iron will. These two forces wrestled together, as it were, breast to breast, neither would yield, and there they stood, equal in strength. Fausch's dark brow flushed, he rocked back and forth in his chair, and his pipe went out. This inward strife gave him a grim hour. No inner commotion had ever before made the slow, heavy man outwardly so restless. The lamp was already burning low and threatening to go out, and Katharine had some time since finished her work in the kitchen, when he rose. He put out the smoking light, but he did not go to his own room near by. He took off his shoes as usual, carried them into the kitchen, and when he came back into the passageway, he stood still and listened. Nothing was stirring in the house. Then, in his bare feet, he went up the stairs to the attic, without noticing that Katharine's door still stood open, and slipped along, as quietly as he could, to the boy's little room. There he listened again. Then he pressed the latch, opened the door, and looked in. Katharine came to her door half dressed. She had heard him feeling his way upstairs. She could now see him plainly, framed by Cain's doorway. A pale gray light filled the room. Her heart beat. What was the Master going to do? Surely he would not--Had he a grudge against the boy, on account of the fight?