He merely grunted; and when she urged him, saying, "Eat, my boy--your favorite supper: scraps and buckwheat porridge!"--he mechanically carried a spoonful to his lips and let it run out of the other corner of his mouth. His brow remained contracted, and from the back of his head, where a fringe of hair was all that remained, a tremor seemed to run down the length of his spine. His eyes stared blankly, until suddenly they began to roll, up and down, right and left; involuntarily they followed the dancing sparks in the fireplace. The mother watched her son intently while, silently and without the usual sipping and a satisfied smacking of the lips, she emptied her bowl. With a mute gesture she drove away the cat, which had crept up purring and was rubbing its head on the man's legs. She herself hardly dared to breathe. What was William thinking about, that he was so still? A short while ago, in winter, he had been much more talkative. What stories he had told of the factories down there, with their wheels and cylinders, their chimneys and kettles, their furnaces that had bellies as big as a beer-barrel at the kirmess--in fact, much bigger--as big as the pit of hell, with flames a yard long! He had grown accustomed to the heat, and now he was always cold, poor boy. Now, even in summer, when other people seek the shade, he stood in the broiling sun up in the field, munched his crust of bread, and gazed fixedly at the ball of burning gold in the sky. But even then, he said, he did not get warm enough. The whole day she had to keep the fire burning on the hearth, and in the hardest winter she had never had to collect so much brushwood and so many fir-cones as now. Wiping the profuse sweat from her brow and loosening a little the cotton kerchief about her lean and wrinkled throat, Katherine Driesch picked up another armful of brushwood from the chimney-corner, broke it in pieces over her knee, and stuffed all the pieces together into the jaws of the fireplace. It was almost ready to burst. But with a groan and shiver her son rubbed his hands, saying slowly and hesitatingly, as though every word cost him pain, and yet as though in haste to speak it, "Mother--go--to--bed." "All right," said she, already reaching for her cap; for she knew that when William had not had one of his "good days" he was apt to be impatient. And so she meant to do quickly what he wished and draw the coverlet over her ears, though people were still stirring outside. From a distance the shrill cries of maidens could be heard, and the hammering of scythes. William listened also. He had now stood up. Craning his neck, so that the cords were tense and rigid, he remained motionless. His knees were bent, his underlip protruding. Only the eyes in his sombre countenance moved incessantly, peering in terror, like those of a hunted wild beast that itself is impatient to hunt its prey. The nostrils in his bull-dog face quivered, as if eager to catch a scent.