There had been no comfort to be got from Mrs. Schneider; on the contrary, since Katherine had knocked at her door a still more consuming agitation had come over her. She trotted back and forth in her room, from the bed to the bench, from the bench to the clothes press, from the clothes press to the hearth; she picked up now this thing and now that, first the pail, then the bowl, then the knife, then the spoon--all to no end and purpose. Back in the stall the forgotten goat bleated piteously. In the midst of her trotting the woman then stopped suddenly and took her head in her hands; but she did not remember the forgotten goat--what, what had neighbor Schneider said? "I must say I am sorry for you"--and "Such a fellow, such a monster"--whom did she mean? Who was a "fellow," who was a monster? It was to be hoped she did not mean her William! Oho! In the meek eyes of the old lady there began to be a gleam; she clenched her fist and beat at the wall of the room, so that the woman next door might hear, and reviled her the while, "Impudent jade, liar!" No, her son was not a "fellow" and he was not a monster either. The thought of him appeased her wrath but did not suffice to banish her agitation. If she only knew why he did not come home for so long! Oh, if he were only here now, to taste of the good food which daily she cooked afresh for him, and which the cat then devoured because he still failed to come. She herself subsisted on coffee; she could not swallow a single morsel of food; her throat was as though strangled with cords. And her breast was weighed down as with a rock--there was no longer any means by which she could roll this away. In former years she had rejoiced with the others when, heavy laden with the harvest, the carts had reeled past her cottage; when, without mishap, the neighbors had housed the corn, ripe and dry. Now, for all she cared, the heavens might have yawned wide and belched water without end, till everything had been beaten down as with sledge hammers! She had used every morning to go to mass and had diligently prayed for divine protection against flood. Now the thunder might crash and the lightning strike and hailstones come rattling down as big as hen's eggs--why did not William come? There was this year a blessed harvest. The people of the Eifel had never before had such a quantity of dead-ripe grain dry in their barns. If the good weather would only hold out a little longer! In two days the last load would be safely garnered. The village was glad, all of the two hundred souls rejoiced, man and woman, boy and girl. Even the little children cooed with pleasure on the turf by the side of the grain fields where their mothers had left them in the shade of a chance bush, along with the jug and the tin dinner pail, while they industriously helped their husbands. Even in the weary evening the harmonica resounded and maidens laughed around the well.