"What is the matter?" he asks David, who steps into the entrance dripping like a drowned cat. "Master," he says, blinking from under the peak of his cap, "it is now more than twenty-eight years since I first came to the mill--and your late father already used to be good to me always...." "And you drag me out of bed in the middle of the night to tell me _that_?" "Yes, for to-night when I woke up and heard the rain pelting down, I suddenly remembered with a start that the sluices of the lock were not opened.... Perhaps the water might get blocked up and we could not grind to-morrow." "Haven't I told you fellows hundreds of times that the sluices need only be opened when the ice is drifting? At high water it only means unnecessary labor." "Well, I didn't touch them," observes David. "Then what do you want?" "Because, when I got to the weir I saw two lovers standing on the drawbridge!" "And that's why?..." "Then I thought it was a regular disgrace and a crying shame, and no longer--" "Let them love each other, in the devil's name!" "And I thought it my duty to tell you. Master, when Master Johannes and our lady--" He gets no further, for his master's fingers are at his throat. What has come over Martin, wretched man? His face becomes livid and swollen; the veins on his forehead stand out; his nostrils quiver, his eyes seem to start from their sockets--white foam is at his mouth. Then he gives vent to a sound like the howl of a jackal, and, loosening his grip of David, with one wrench he tears the shirt at his throat asunder. Two or three deep breaths, like a man who is achoking; then he roars aloud in suddenly unfettered rage: "Where are they? They shall account to me for this. They have been acting a farce! They have deceived me! Where are they? I'll do for them! I'll do for them, then and there!" He tears the lantern out of terrified David's hand and rushes out. He disappears into the wheel-house; a second later he reappears. High above his head there gleams an axe. Then he swings the lantern thrice in a circle and flings it far away from him into the water. He storms along in the direction of the weir. "There's some one coming," whispers Trude, nestling closer up to Johannes. "Probably they have something to do at the sluices," he whispers back. "Don't stir and be of good courage." Nearer and nearer hastens the dark figure. A beastlike roaring pierces through the night, above the fury of the storm. "It is Martin," says Johannes, staggering back three paces. But he collects himself quickly, clutches Trude and drags her with him close up to the woodwork at the weir, in the darkest shadow of which they both crouch down. Close to their heads the infuriated man races along. The axe, lifted on high, glints in the half-light of the foam. On the other side of the weir he stops. He seems to be gazing searchingly across the wide meadow, which spreads before him in monotonous darkness without tree or shrub.