The Koerners, indeed, as Marriott said, had had a hard winter. The old man, sustained at first by a foolish optimism, had expected that his injury would be compensated immediately by heavy damages from the railroad he had served so long. Marriott had begun suit, and then the law began the slow and wearisome unfolding of its interminable delays. Weeks and months went by and nothing was done. Koerner sent for Marriott, and Marriott explained--the attorneys for the railroad company had filed a demurrer, the docket was full, the case would not be reached for a long time. Koerner could not understand; finally, he began to doubt Marriott; some of his neighbors, with the suspicion natural to the poor, hinted that Marriott might have been influenced by the company. Koerner’s leg, too, gave him incessant pain. All winter long he was confined to the house, and the family grew tired of his monotonous complainings. To add to this, Koerner was now constantly dunned by the surgeon and by the authorities of the hospital; the railroad refused to pay these bills because Koerner had brought suit; the bills, to a frugal German like Koerner, were enormous, appalling. The Koerners, a year before, had bought the house in which they lived, borrowing the money from a building and loan association. The agent of the association, who had been so kind and obliging before the mortgage was signed, was now sharp and severe; he had lately told Koerner that unless he met the next instalment of interest he would set the family out in the street. Koerner had saved some money from his wages, small as they were; but this was going fast. During the winter Mrs. Koerner, though still depressed and ill, had begun to do washings; the water, splashing over her legs from the tubs in the cold wood-shed day after day, had given her rheumatism. Gusta helped, of course, but with all they could do it was hard to keep things going. Gusta tried to be cheerful, but this was the hardest work of all; she often thought of the pleasant home of the Wards, and wished she were back there. She would have gone back, indeed, and given her father her wages, but there was much to do at home--the children to look after, the house to keep, the meals to get, the washings to do, and her father’s leg to dress. Several times she consulted Marriott about the legal entanglements into which the family was being drawn; Marriott was wearied with the complications--the damage suit, the mortgage, the threatened actions for the doctor’s bills. The law seemed to be snarling the Koerners in every one of its meshes, and the family was settling under a Teutonic melancholia.