No reply. Kätchen was occupied in bringing the boat safely to the shore. She sprang into the water, drew her skiff nearer, and bound it firmly to the post. "Where is Eva?" repeated Blanden, now in a supreme state of excitement, while he grasped the girl and held her firmly. "There," said the idiot girl, with imperturbable composure, and pointed to the sea. "Dead then, dead!" Kätchen nodded her head; Blanden sobbed, burying his face in his hands. Then she flung herself down before him, clung to his knees, kissed his hands. Like a flash of lightning, a fearful thought passed through Blanden's mind. "Murderess!" cried he, "you have murdered her; you have hurled her into the sea!" Kätchen was mute. No change was apparent in her features. It seemed as though she looked up at him with a triumphant smile. "Misery of miseries!" cried Blanden, wringing his hands; "the victim of an idiot's passion! Yes, Wegen, this creature, this half-human being, this female Caliban loves me; she has pursued me with her passion even into the Forester's house; I found her several times beneath my windows; she cherished a moody, dull hatred for Eva! Heavens! Why did I not warn her! It is horrible--the girl has killed her!" Wegen seized the girl with all the energy of a _gens d'arme_. "She must be arrested--she must give information." Unconcernedly Kätchen allowed all to pass over her; she replied to no questions. Her frog-like eyes only rested upon Blanden with an expression of silent beatitude. The girl was conducted to the fisherman's cottage. Miranda, when she heard the news, fell into a swoon. How she had cautioned Eva against spending an evening on the sea; the latter had escaped secretly in order to indulge her unhappy love for the ocean. The Räthin acknowledged this when she had recovered again, and Blanden and Wegen could hardly protect the idiot girl from the gigantic lady's maltreatment, who felt constrained to let her boundless excitement vent itself upon some victim or other. A rural policeman chanced to be stopping just before the inn; he was summoned in order to take Kätchen with him to the district town to undergo what certainly promised to be a futile examination, because only seldom did a sudden gleam of light flash through her obscured mind. Then Miranda, whose anguish indeed needed some outlet for its anger, turned with the most unjust reproaches upon Blanden, who, by his recklessness, had plunged mother and daughter into ruin, and had put both into the pillory before the whole of Neukuhren, before the capital, and before the entire Province; Eva had become ill in consequence of that disgrace, and since her illness had not been able to cast off a state of intense melancholy. Kätchen certainly should be arrested, but who knows if not she, but others, for whom there were no policemen, were perhaps the murderers of her unhappy child?