Rockhammer was his name, and all who saw him felt that he did honor to it, too. What a man he was! He had it in him to blast rocks. Of course there was no such thing as trying to bully or contradict him, for it only served to make him perfectly wild with rage: he would clench his fists; the veins on his temples would swell up like thick thongs; and when he started swearing into the bargain, every being trembled before him, and the very dogs fled in terror to their kennels. His wife was a meek, gentle, yielding creature. How could it be otherwise? Not for twenty-four hours would he have endured at his side a more sturdy-natured being, who might have attempted to preserve even the shadow of an independent will. As it was, the two lived together fairly well, happily one might almost have said, had it not been for his fatal temper, which broke forth wildly at the slightest provocation and caused the quiet woman many a tearful hour. But she shed most tears when misfortune's hand fell heavily upon her children. Three had been born to them--bonny, healthy, sturdy boys. They had clear, blue eyes, flaxen hair and, above all, "a pair of promising fists," as their father was wont to declare with pride, though the youngest, who was still in his cradle, could as yet only make use of his to suck at them. The two elder boys, however, were already splendid fellows. How defiantly they looked about them, how haughtily they took up their stand! With their heads thrown back and their hands in their trousers pockets, each seemed to assert: "I am my father's son. Who'll dare me?" They fought each other all day long and it was their father himself who always goaded them on. And if their mother in her terror intervened and begged them to be at peace with one another, she got laughed at into the bargain for her fears. The poor woman lived in constant anxiety about her wild boys, for she saw to her terror that both had inherited their father's violent temper. Once already she had only just arrived in the nick of time, when Fritz, then eight years old, was about to attack his brother, two years older than himself, with a large kitchen knife; and a half a year later the day really dawned on which her dark presentiments were realized. The two boys had been fighting in the yard, and Martin, the elder one, wild with rage because Fritz had beaten him, had hurled a stone at him and hit him so unfortunately at the back of his head that he fell down bleeding and immediately lost the power of speech. They could stanch the blood, and the wound healed up, but his speech did not return. Indifferent to all around, the boy sat there and let them feed him: he had become an idiot. It was a hard blow for the miller's family. The mother wept whole nights through, and even he, the energetic hard-working man, went about for a long time as if in a dream.