Strange thoughts surged through the chairman's head; he took counsel with this neighbor and that, secret counsel. Behind the barn they whispered, like pairs of lovers, or far out on the open field, where only the quivering heat could overhear them. Appealing to courts of law is always bad business; one never knows whether one is going to get justice or injustice. But before one should let the village be laid in ashes, now, just now, when the well was beginning to run dry, when even the brook in the cooler valley trickled only in a thin stream over shining stones, now, when one must be mindful of the harvest--it was abundant this year, but who could have the courage to gather it into the barns?--now the watchword was, better accuse than regret! * * * * * * On a warm evening after a serene summer day the constable from the nearest city hall and the chairman of the parish council plodded along together toward the cottage of the Widow Driesch. Katherine Driesch was cooking her evening porridge. Her William had just driven in the herd; the last blast of his trumpet still reverberated in the air and every cow was rushing, tail up, into her stall. The herdsman could now rest from his labors. He was sitting on his stool by the hearth, with the bowl in his lap, the spoon in his hand, and his mother was serving him his evening meal. But he paid no attention to the scraps of bacon which swam like appetizing little fishes in the porridge. With unaverted eyes he gazed at the fireplace, where the sparks were dancing. His mother said, "Eat, my boy," took the scraps of bacon out of her own bowl, and gave him these also. Her William was fond of bacon, and though it might be wickedly dear, the boy must have his scraps every evening. What else had he in the world? Nothing at all, poor boy! Of five sons, he was the last--two had died young, two had fallen in France--all these afflictions she had borne with Christian resignation. But that William had down there so worn himself out with labor that he had had to be taken to the hospital and in the prime of life had been declared no longer able-bodied, that grieved her. Up here he had, to be sure, obtained the position of village herdsman--but was that a proper office for one who had always been cleverer than the other boys of his age?--who even today was cleverer than all those who since his time had passed through the hands of the schoolmaster,--who really ought to have been ordained in the Church, if they had only had the money. A dunce can herd swine and drive cattle! The mother suppressed a sigh and brushed William's bushy brows back from his eyes.