Fausch looked over to the boy's bed. Then he drew a long breath. The lad was asleep. The smith had thought that Cain might still be crying. That was why he had come upstairs. He now closed the door again carefully. Katharine involuntarily stepped back into her room, out of sight. She heard Fausch pass, taking care to tread softly, and go downstairs again. He went into the living room, and then she plainly heard him go into the next room. The thumping of her heart, that had almost taken away her breath subsided. But she lay awake a long time, wondering what the smith had come up for. Katharine might wonder as long as she chose. Fausch never betrayed by any word, what he had been looking for in the boy's room that night. Neither did he show any change in his bearing, but remained sullen and reserved as always, and seemed at first to have forgotten that he had half promised the boy his protection against the persecution of the Waltheim lads. Nevertheless, the two powers were still struggling within him, and neither got the upper hand, because both were equally strong. However, one day, and soon after a second and a third time, the Waltheimers were surprised to see Stephen Fausch appear on the principal street of the village, by broad daylight, on a week day during working hours. He had on his leather apron, and was bareheaded, dark and grimy as usual, so that every one could see that he had just left his anvil. He looked so unfriendly, that those who met him did not care to accost him. It was about the time in the forenoon when the Waltheim children were let out of school. He walked past the schoolhouse, which stood in an open square in the middle of the village, as if some errand took him further, but he stopped in a side street or behind a neighboring house and waited, with his bare arms folded across his chest. An acquaintance asked him what he was doing. "Waiting, if you want to know," he answered. When the school children suddenly came streaming out of the schoolhouse, he watched for Cain, and when he had spied him, looked after him for a while, until the boy had left the village behind, and was walking toward the wood that separated the smithy from the village. Then indeed, he stepped into one of the ale houses, which are numerous in Waltheim, as in every village, took his morning drink, but said nothing here, either, about what had brought him to town, and then took himself off homeward, as surly as he had come. "He's watching his boy," said the Waltheimers, and thought themselves very clever to have found this out. "He seems to have some kind of suspicion about the boy. The poor fellow must have a pretty hard time at home with a harsh, bristly chap like Fausch."