“I will stay here, and gladly, mother,” she answered, for in these months of sweet acquaintanceship the affection of the woman and girl had become much like that which exists between mother and daughter, “but it is not that I fear anything, myself, from the student Tring. It is really my uncle’s conduct these few weeks that troubles me, and more especially his conduct since that night when the men came here to steal. He is so changed!” “I have seen,” Joseph’s mother replied. “But has he ever been cruel to you?” “Oh, no! Never that. But he is not at all as he was when we first came here to live. Then he was full of merriment, ready to talk or laugh with me, eager to go somewhere or to see something that would be of pleasure to us both. Now he does not seem to think of me, at all. He is always like one in a dream. Sometimes when I speak to him, he does not seem to hear. Other times he answers my questions queerly, saying things that I had not thought of. He is caught up in something that I fear, and something that has little good in it.” “It’s the student Tring who has done all this.” “Yes, I think that he has done much of it. They two are together every night, and they work together in the loft above my head. I can hear them moving about occasionally, though sometimes a terrible silence is all that there is.” “My dear child,” the woman laid her work by for the moment, “this is always your home here. Come here when there is anything to trouble you. . . . The little bed is always yours. . . . We, too, are greatly troubled as well, as perhaps you know. Pan Andrew has not been the same since that accursed night. . . . Yet if one had but sense, we have here all that should make man happy: children, love, bread, and a house—why must men be always sighing and striving for that which they have not?” “We were so happy before,” continued Elzbietka. “It seems to me that the student Tring has some charm over my uncle which he cannot resist.” “Heaven help us,” exclaimed the woman, making the sign of the cross. “And have you any idea what is going on in the loft above you?” “None.” The girl shuddered. “It is some terrible thing. To-night both men spoke in such a peculiar way that I was frightened when they first came together. And ever since that they have been speaking more wildly, I think, than ever before. My uncle keeps saying, ‘This will drive me mad,’ and Tring says to him again, ‘There is nothing of harm in it. Try once more.’ Then again there is silence and my uncle speaks shortly, mad things—and I was frightened and came here.” “My poor child.”