Katy Gaumer

To the children Coonie's least word and slightest motion were convulsing; now they shrieked with glee, and their fathers and mothers with them. The stranger seemed to discover still deeper springs of mirth; he laughed until he cried.

Only Katy, stealing out, was not there to see the end. Nor was she at hand to speed little Adam, who was to close the entertainment with "Hang up the Baby's Stocking." But little Adam had had his whispered instructions. He knew no German recitation—this was his first essay at speech-making—but he knew a German Bible verse which his Grandmother Gaumer had taught him, "Ehre sei Gott in der Höhe, und Friede auf Erden, und Den Menschen ein Wohlgefallen." (Glory to God in the Highest and on earth, peace, good will toward men.) He looked like a Christmas spirit as he said it, with his flaxen hair and his blue eyes, as the stranger might have looked sixty years ago. Daniel Gaumer started the applause, and as little Adam passed him, lifted him to his knee.

It is not like the Millerstonians to have any entertainment without refreshments, and for this entertainment refreshments had been provided. Grandmother Gaumer's basket was filled to the brim with cookies, ginger-cakes, sand-tarts, flapjacks, in all forms of bird and beast and fish, and these Katy went to the attic to fetch. She ran up the steps; she had other and more exciting plans than the mere distribution of the treat.

In the attic, by the window, sullen, withdrawn as usual, sat David Hartman.

"You must get out of here," ordered Katy in her lordly way. "I have something to do here, and you must go quickly. You ought to be ashamed to sit here alone. You are always ugly. Perhaps"—this both of them knew was flippant nonsense—"perhaps you have been after my cakes!"

David made no answer; he only looked at her from under his frowning brows, then shambled down the steps and out the door into the cold, gray afternoon. Let him take his sullenness and meanness away! Then Katy's bright eyes began to search the room.

In another moment, down in the schoolroom, little Adam cried out and hid his face against the stranger's breast; then another child screamed in excited rapture. The Belsnickel had come! It was covered with the dust of the schoolhouse attic; it was not of the traditional huge size—it was, indeed, less than five feet tall; but it wore a furry coat—the distinguished stranger leaped to his feet, saying that it was not possible that that old pelt still survived!—it opened its mouth "like scissors," as Ollie Kuhns's piece had said. It had not the traditional bag, but it had a basket, Grandmother Gaumer's, and the traditional cakes were there. It climbed upon a desk, its black-stockinged legs and red dress showing through the rents of the old, ragged coat, and the children surrounded it, laughing, begging, screaming with delight.

The stranger stood and looked at Katy. He did not yet realize how large a part she had had in the entertainment, though about that a proud grandfather would soon inform him; he saw the Gaumer eyes and the Gaumer bright face, and he remembered with sharp pain the eyes of a little sister gone fifty years ago.

"Who is that child?" he asked.

Katy's grandfather called her to him, and she came slowly, slipping like a crimson butterfly from the old coat, which the other children seized upon with joy. She heard the governor's question and her grandfather's answer.

"It is my Abner's only child."

Then Katy's eyes met the stranger's bright gaze. She halted in the middle of the room, as though she did not know exactly what she was doing. Their praise embarrassed her, her foolish anger at David Hartman hurt her, her head swam. Even her joy seemed to smother her. This great man had hated Millerstown, as she hated Millerstown, sometimes, or he would not have gone away; he had loved it as she did, or he would not have come back to laugh and weep with his old friends. Perhaps he, too, had wanted everything and had not known how to get it; perhaps he, too, had wanted to fly and had not known where to find wings! A consciousness of his friendliness, of his kinship, seized upon her. He would understand her, help her! And like the child she was, Katy ran to him. Indeed, he understood even now, for stooping to kiss her, he hid her foolish tears from Millerstown.

CHAPTER III
THE GREAT MAN

Presently Katy saw Katy Gaumer coming back to her native Millerstown, covered with honors, of what sort Katy did not exactly know, and going about on Christmas morning to see the Millerstown Christmas trees and to receive the homage of a delighted community.

Meanwhile, Katy tripped over her own feet and sent a dish flying from the kitchen table, and started to fill the teakettle from the milk-pitcher. Finally, to Bevy Schnepp's disgust, Katy spilled the salt. Bevy was as much one of the party as the governor. She moved swiftly about, her little face twisted into a knot, profoundly conscious of the importance of her position as assistant to the chief cook on this great day, her shrill voice now breathing forth commands, now recounting strange tales. Grandmother Gaumer, to whose kitchen Bevy was a thrice daily visitor, had long ago accustomed herself not to listen to the flow of speech, and had thereby probably saved her own reason.

"You fetch me hurry a few coals, Katy. Now don't load yourself down so you cannot walk! 'The more haste the less speed!' Adam, you take your feet to yourself or they will get stepped on for sure. Gran'mom, your pies! You better get them out or they burn to nothing! Go in where the Putz is, Adam, then you are not all the time under the folks' feet. Sally Edwin, you peel a few more potatoes for me, will you, Sally, for the mashed potatoes? Mashed potatoes go down like nothing. Ach, I had the worst time with my supper yesterday! The chicken wouldn't get, and the governor was there. I tell you, the Old Rip was in it! But I carried the pan three times round the house and then it done fine for me. Katy, if you take another piece of celery, I'll teach you the meaning. To eat my nice celery that I cleaned for dinner! And the hard, yet! If you want celery, fetch some for yourself and clean it and eat it. I'd be ashamed, Katy, a big girl like you! You want to be so high gelernt, you think you are a platform speaker, yet you would eat celery out of the plate. Look out, the salt, Katy! Well, Katy! Would you spill the salt, yet! Do you want to put a hex on everything? I—"

"Bevy!" Katie exploded with alarm.

"What is it?" cried Bevy.

"Your mouth is open!"

"I—I—" Bevy gurgled, then gasped. Bevy was not slow on the uptake. "I opened it, I opened it a-purpose to tell you what I think of you. I—"

But Katy, hearing an opening door, had gone, dancing into the sitting-room, where, on great days like this, the feast was spread. The room was larger than the kitchen; in the center stood the long table, and in one corner was the Christmas tree with the elaborate "Putz," a garden in which miniature sheep and cows walked through forests and swans swam on glass lakelets. Before the "Putz," entranced, sat fat Adam; near by, beside the shiny "double-burner," the governor and his brothers and young Dr. Benner were establishing themselves. The governor had still a hundred questions to ask.

Katy perched herself on the arm of her grandfather's chair, saying to herself that Bevy might call forever now and she would not answer. The odor of roasting turkey filled the house, intoxicating the souls of hungry men, but it was not half so potent as this breath of power, this atmosphere of the great world of affairs, which surrounded Great-Uncle Gaumer. Katy's heart thumped as she listened; the great, vague plans which she had made in the night seemed at one moment possible of execution, at the next absolutely mad. Her face flushed and her skin pricked as she thought of making known her desires; her heart seemed to sink far below its proper resting-place. She listened to the governor with round, excited eyes, now praying for courage, now yielding to despair.

The governor's questions did not refer to the great world,—it seemed as though the world had become of no account to him,—but to Millerstown, the Millerstown of his youth, of apple-butter matches, of raffles, of battalions, of the passing through of troops to the war, of the rough preachers of a stirring age. He remembered many things which his brothers had forgotten; they and the younger folk listened entranced. As for Bevy, moving about on tiptoe, so as not to miss a word,—it was a marvel that she was able to finish the dinner.

"He traveled on horseback," said the governor. "He had nothing to his name in all the world but his horse and his old saddlebags, and he visited the people whether they wanted him or not. At our house he was always welcome,—he stayed once a whole winter,—and on Sundays he used to give it to us in church, I can tell you! Everything he'd yell out that would come into his mind. One Sunday he yelled at me, 'There you stand in the choir, and you couldn't get a pig's bristle between your teeth. Sing out, Daniel!'

"But he could preach powerfully! He made the people listen! There was no sleeping in the church when he was in the pulpit. If the young people did not pay attention, he called right out, 'John, behave! Susy, look at me!'"

"We have such a preacher here," said Uncle Edwin in his slow way. "He is a Improved New Mennonite. He—"

"They wear hats with Scripture on them, and they sing, 'If you love your mother, keep her in the sky,'" interrupted Katy.

"'Meet her in the sky,'" corrected Grandmother Gaumer. "That has some sense to it."

"He won't read the words as they are written in the Bible," went on Uncle Edwin, apparently not minding the interruption. He shared with the rest of Katy's kin their foolish opinion of Katy. "He says the words that are printed fine don't belong there, they are put in. It is like riding on a bad road, his reading. It goes bump, bump. It sounds very funny."

"He preaches on queer texts," said Katy. "He preached on 'She Fell in Love with her Mother-in-Law.'"

"Now, Katy!" admonished Grandmother Gaumer.

Bevy Schnepp had endured as much as she could of insult to the denomination to which she belonged and to the preacher under whom she sat.

"Your Lutheran preachers have 'kein Saft und kein Kraft, kein Salz und kein Peffer' [no sap and no strength, no salt and no pepper]," she quoted. "They are me too leppish [insipid]. You must give these things a spiritual meaning. It meant Naomi and Ruth."

The governor smiled his approval at Bevy. "Right you are, Bevy!" Then he began to ask questions about his former acquaintances.

"What has come over John Hartman?"

"While he is so cross, you mean?" said Grandfather Gaumer. "I don't know what has come over him. It is a strange thing. He is so long queer that we forget he was ever any other way."

"Was he ugly this morning?" asked Grandmother Gaumer.

"He didn't ask us to come in and she didn't come to the door at all."

Bevy Schnepp, entering with laden hands, made sharp comment.

"She is afraid her things will get spoiled if the sun or the moon or the cold air strikes them. She is crazy for cleanness. She will get yet like fat Abby. Fat Abby once washed her hands fifteen times before breakfast, and if he (her husband) touched the coffee-pot even to push it back with his finger if it was boiling over, then she would make fresh."

"And do the Koehlers still live on the mountain?"

"There are only two Koehlers left," answered the squire, "William and his boy." The squire shook his head solemnly. "It is a queer thing about the Koehlers, too. The others were honest and right in their minds, but William, he is none of these things."

"Not honest!" said the governor.

"About fifteen years ago he did some bricklaying at the church and he had the key of the communion cupboard. The solid service was there and while he was working it disappeared."

"Disappeared!" repeated the governor. "You mean he took it? What could he do with it?"

"I don't know. Nobody knows. He goes about muttering and praying over it. They say his boy hardly gets enough to eat. I can't understand it."

"He!" Bevy now had the great turkey platter in her arms; its weight and her desire to express herself made her gasp. "He! He looks at a penny till it is a twenty-dollar gold-piece. And you ought to see his boy! He is for all the world like a girl. 'Like father, like son!' He'll do something, too, yet."

Katy slid from the arm of her grandfather's chair, her cheeks aflame.

"You have to look at pennies when you are poor," she protested. "You can't throw money round when you don't have it!"

Bevy slid the platter gently to its place on the table, then she faced about.

"Now, listen once!" cried she with admiration. "You can't throw money round when you don't have it, can't you? What do you know about it, you little chicken?"

Katy's face flushed a deeper crimson. If looks could have slain, Bevy would have dropped. Young Dr. Benner turned and looked at Katy suddenly and curiously. She would have gone on expostulating had not Grandmother Gaumer risen and the other Gaumers with her, all moving with one accord toward the feast. There was time only for a secret and threatening gesture toward Bevy, then Katy bent her head with the rest.

"'The eyes of all wait upon Thee,'" said Grandfather Gaumer in German. "'Thou givest them their meat in due season.'"

Heartily the Gaumers began upon the Christmas feast, the feast beside which the ordinary Christmas dinner was so poor and simple a thing. Here was the turkey, done to a turn, here were all possible vegetables, all possible pies and cakes and preserves. To these Grandmother Gaumer had added a few common side-dishes, so that her brother-in-law might not return to the West without a taste, at least, of all the staple foods of his childhood. There was a slice of home-raised, home-cured ham; there was a piece of smoked sausage; there was a dish of Sauerkraut and a dish of "Schnitz und Knöpf,"—these last because the governor had mentioned them yesterday in his speech. It was well that the squire lived next door and that Bevy had her own stove to use as well as Grandmother Gaumer's.

Bevy occupied the chair nearest the kitchen door. There are few class distinctions in Millerstown, though one is not expected to leave the station in life in which he was born. It was proper for Bevy to occupy the position of maid and for little Katy to go to school. If Katy had undertaken to live out, or Bevy to become learned, Millerstown would have disapproved of both of them. When each remained in her place, they were equal.

The governor tasted all the dishes serenely, and Grandmother Gaumer apologized from beginning to end, as is polite in Millerstown. The turkey might have been heavier—if he had, he would certainly have perished long before Grandfather's axe was sharpened for him! The pie might have been flakier, the sausage might have been smoked a bit longer—it would have been sinful to add a breath of smoke to what was already perfect.

"And then it wouldn't have been ready for to-day!" said the governor.

"But we might have begun earlier." Grandmother Gaumer would not yield her point. "If we had butchered two days earlier, it would have been better."

When human power could do no more, when Bevy had no more breath for urgings, such as, "Ach, eat it up once, so it gets away!" or "Ach, finish it; it stood round long enough already!" the Gaumers pushed back their chairs and talked with mellower wit and softer hearts of old times, of father and mother and grandparents, and of the little sister who had died.

"She was just thirteen," said Governor Gaumer. "She was the liveliest little girl! I often think if she had lived, she would have made of herself something different from the other people in Millerstown. But now she would have been an old woman, think of that!" The governor held out his hand and Katy came across to him, her eyes filled with tears. Katy was always easily moved. "Didn't she look like this one?"

"Yes," agreed Grandfather Gaumer. "That I always said."

The governor laid both his hands on Katy's shoulders.

"And what"—said he,—"what are you going to do in this world, Miss Katy?"

Katy looked up at him with a deep, deep breath. She had thought that yesterday held a great moment, but here was a much greater one. She clasped her hands, she gasped again, she looked the governor straight in the face. Here was her opportunity, the opportunity which she had begun to think would never come.

"Ach," said Katy with a deep sigh, "when I am through the Millerstown school, I should like to go to a big school and learn everything!"

The governor smiled upon her.

"Everything, Katy!"

"Yes," sighed Katy.

"Listen to her once!" cried Bevy Schnepp with pride.

"Can't you learn enough here?"

"I am already in the next to the highest class," explained Katy. "And our teacher, he is not a very good one. He wants to be English and a teacher ought to be English, but he is werry Germaner than the scholars. He said to us in school, 'We are to have nothing but English here, do you versteh?' That is exactly the way he said it to us. He says lots of words that are not English. I want to be English. I—"

"Just listen now!" cried Bevy again, her hands piled high with dishes.

"I want to be well educated," finished Katy with glowing cheeks.

"And what would you do when you were educated?" asked the governor.

"I would leave Millerstown," said Katy.

"Why?" asked the governor.

"It would be no use having an education in Millerstown," answered Katy with conviction. "You have no idea how slow Millerstown is."

"And where did you think you would go?"

"Perhaps to Phildel'phy," answered Katy. "Perhaps I would be a missionary to Africay."

Strange sounds issued from the throats of Katy's kin.

"You are sure you could do nothing in Millerstown with an education?" asked the governor.

"It is nothing to do here," explained Katy. "You can walk round Millerstown a whole evening and you don't hear anything and you don't see anything."

"Would she like murders?" demanded Bevy Schnepp.

"You go in the store and Caleb Stemmel and Danny Koser are too dumb and lazy even to read the paper, and Sarah Ann Mohr is hemming and everybody else is sleeping. The married people sit round and don't say anything, and—"

"Do you want them to fight?" Bevy was not discouraged by being ignored.

"You think it would be better to be a missionary?" said the governor.

"It would be better to be anything," declared Katy fervently. "I cannot stand Millerstown!" Katy clasped her hands and looked into the face of her distinguished relative. "Oh, please, please make them send me away to a big school! I prayed for it!" added Katy.

Over Katy's head the eyes of her elders met. The older folk thought of the little girl who might have been something different, the squire remembered the journeys he had planned in his youth and the years he had waited to take them.

But to Katy's chagrin and bitter disappointment, no one said another word about an education. Grandmother Gaumer suggested that Katy might help Aunt Sally and Bevy with the dishes. Afterwards, Katy was called upon to say her piece once more. When little Adam followed with his Bible verse and was given equal praise, Katy's poor heart, sinking lower and lower, reached the most depressed position which it is possible for a heart to assume. Her cause was lost.

Then the governor prepared to start on his long journey to the West. There he had grown sons and daughters and little grandchildren whom these Eastern cousins might never see. He kissed Grandmother Gaumer and his niece Sally and little Adam and Katy, and shook hands with Bevy Schnepp, then he returned and kissed Grandmother Gaumer once more. There was something solemn in his farewell; at sight of Grandmother Gaumer's face Katy was keenly conscious once more of her own despair. From the window she watched the three old men go down the street, the famous man who had gone away from Millerstown and the two who had stayed. It seemed to Katy that the two were less noble because of the obscurity of their lives.

"Why did gran'pop stay here always?" she asked when she and her grandmother were alone. "Why did uncle go away?"

"Gran'pop was the oldest, and he and the squire had to stay here. Uncle had the chance to go."

"But—" Katy crossed to her grandmother's side. Everything was still in the warm, pine-scented room. "But, grandmother, why do you cry?"

"I am not crying," said grandmother brightly.

"But you look—you look as if"—Katy struggled for words in which to express her thoughts—"as if everything were finished!"

Grandmother sighed gently. "I am an old woman, Katy, and your uncle is an old man. We may never see each other again."

"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" cried Katy. "This is a very sad Christmas!"

It was not the sadness of parting which made Katy cry. It was unthinkable that anything should change for her. Everything would be the same, always—alas, that it should be so! She, Katy Gaumer, with all her smartness in school, and all her ability to plan and manage entertainments, would stay here in this spot until she died. Grandmother Gaumer, reproaching herself, comforted her for that which was not a grief at all.

"We will be here a long time yet. And you are to go away to school, and—"

Katy sprang to her feet.

"Who says it, gran'mom? Who says I dare go to school?"

"Your gran'pop said it, and your uncles said it when you were out with Bevy. You are to study here till you are through with the highest class, then you are to go away. Your uncle will find a school: he will send us catalogues and he will give us advice."

Katy clasped her hands.

"I do not deserve it!"

"You said you prayed for it," reminded Grandmother Gaumer.

"But I prayed without faith," confessed Katy. "I did not believe for one little minute it would ever come true in this world!"

"Well," said Grandmother Gaumer, "it is coming true."

Here for once was bliss without alloy, here was a rapture without reaction. Christmas entertainments, at which one did well, ended; there was no outlook from them, and it was the same with perfect recitations in school. But this was different. One had the moment's complete joy, one had also something much better.

"I must study," planned Katy. "I must learn. I must make"—alas, that one's joy should be another's bitter trial!—"I must make that teacher learn me everything he knows!"

It was dusk when Grandfather Gaumer came home.

"I told Katy," said Grandmother Gaumer.

"Daniel gave me two hundred dollars to put in the bank in Katy's name," announced Grandfather Gaumer solemnly. "It shall be spent for books and to start Katy. He and the squire and I will see her through."

Katy flung herself upon her grandfather.

"I will learn everything," she promised. "I will make you proud of me. Like it says in the Sunday School book, 'I will bring home my sheaves.' And now," said Katy, "I am going to run out to the schoolhouse and back."

In an instant she was gone, scarlet shawl about her, slamming the door. Perhaps the two old people sitting together were not sorry to have her away for a while. The day with its memories and its parting had been hard, and the mere youthfulness of youth is sometimes difficult for age to bear.

"Her legs fly like the arms of a windmill," said Grandfather Gaumer.

Then they sat silently together.

Already Katy was halfway out to the schoolhouse. The threatened snow had fallen and the sky had cleared at sunset. There was still a faint, rosy glow in the west, a glow which was presently dimmed by the brighter light which spread over the landscape as the cinder ladle at the furnace turned out its fiery charge upon the cinder bank. When that flame faded, the stars were shining brightly; Katy stood in the road before the schoolhouse and looked up at them and then round about her. The schoolhouse, glorified by her recent triumph, was further sanctified by her great hopes. Beside it on the hillside stood the little church, where she had been confirmed and had had her first communion, where during the long German sermons she had dreamed many dreams, and where she had been thrilled by solemn watch-night services. Millerstown was not without power to impress itself even upon one who hated it.

Now Katy raced down the hill. But she was not ready to go into the house. She shrieked into Bevy Schnepp's kitchen window; she almost upset Caleb Stemmel as he plodded to his place behind the stove in the store, wishing that there were no Christmases; she ran once more to the end of Locust Street and across to Church Street and looked through the thick trees at the Hartman house. David had surely some handsome Christmas gifts from his parents. Then, straining her eyes, she gazed up at the little white house on the mountain-side. There was not much Christmas there, that was certain, but Alvin was there, handsome, adorable. Alvin would pay heed to her if she was going away, the one person in Millerstown to be educated!

Then Katy stretched out her arms.

"Oh, dear Millerstown!" cried Katy. "Oh, dear, dumb Millerstown, I am going away from you!"

CHAPTER IV
THE KOEHLERS' CHRISTMAS DAY

Here the day passed like any other day, except that it was duller and less tolerable. There was no school for Alvin and no work for his father, and they had to spend the long hours together. Alvin did not like school, but to-day he would cheerfully have gone before daylight and have remained until dark. His father did not like holidays; they removed the goal, for which he worked and of which he thought night and day, a little farther away from him. He would have preferred to work every day, even on Sundays.

William was a mason by trade, but when there was no mason work for him, he was willing to turn his hand to anything which would bring him a little money. Another mason had recently established himself in the village, urged, it was supposed, by those who were unwilling to admit Koehler to their houses for the occasional bits of plastering which had to be done. There was no question that Koehler was very queer. Not only was he likely to kneel down at any moment and begin to pray, but he did other singular things. He had once worked until two o'clock in the afternoon without his dinner, because his watch had stopped and he had not sense enough to know it. It was not strange that thrifty Millerstown agreed that he was not a safe person to have about.

Between him and his son there was little sympathy; there was, indeed, seldom speech. Alvin was bitterly ashamed of his father, of his miserly ways, of his shabby clothes, and above all, of his insane habit of praying. William prayed incoherently about the communion service which he was supposed to have stolen—at least, that was what seemed to be the burden of his petition. Whether he prayed for grace to return it, or for forgiveness for having taken it, Millerstown did not know, so confused was his speech. Alvin's position was a hard one. He was humiliated by the taunts of the Millerstown boys; he hated the poverty of his life; he was certain that never had human being been so miserable.

Early on Christmas morning the two had had their breakfast together in the kitchen of the little white house where they lived, and there Alvin had made an astonishing request. Alvin was fond of fine clothes; there was a certain red tie in the village store at which he had looked longingly for days. Alvin was given to picturing himself, as Katy Gaumer pictured herself, in conspicuous and important positions in the eyes of men. Alvin's coveted distinction, however, was of fine apparel, and not of superior education. He liked to be clean and tidy; he disliked rough play and rough work which disarranged his clothes and soiled his hands.

"Ach, pop," he begged, "give me a Christmas present!" His eyes filled with tears, he had been cruelly disappointed because he had found no way to get the tie in time for the Christmas entertainment. "Everybody has a Christmas present!"

"A Christmas present!" repeated William Koehler, his quick, darting eyes shining with amazement. His were not mean features; he had the mouth of a generous man, and his eyes were full and round. But between his brows lay a deep depression, as though experience had moulded his forehead into a shape for which nature had not intended it. If it had not been for that deep wrinkle, one would have said that he was a gentle, kindly, humorous soul. "A Christmas present!" said he again.

Without making any further answer, he rose and went out the kitchen door and down the board walk toward the chicken house. He repeated the monstrous request again and again, like a person of simple mind.

"A Christmas present! He asks me for a Christmas present!"

When he reached the chicken house, he stood still, leaning against the fence. The chickens clustered about him with crowings and squawkings, some flying to his shoulders. Birds and beasts and insects loved and trusted poor William if human beings did not. It was possible for him to go about among his bees and handle them as he would without fear of stings.

Now he paid no heed to the flapping, eager fowl, except to thrust them away from him. He stood leaning against the fence and looking down upon the gray landscape. It was not yet quite daylight and the morning was cloudy. The depression in his forehead deepened; he was looking fixedly at one spot, John Hartman's house, as though he had never seen it before, or as though he meant to fix it in his mind forever.

The Hartman house was always there. He had seen it a thousand times, would see it a thousand times more. On moonlight nights, its wide roofs glittered, on dark nights a gleaming lamp set on a post before the door fixed it in place. In winter its light and its great bulk, in summer its girdle of trees, distinguished it from all the other houses in Millerstown. William Koehler could see it from every foot of his little house and garden. It was before his eyes when he worked among his plants, which seemed to love him also, and when he sat for a few minutes on his porch, and when he tended his bees or fed his chickens.

Beyond the Hartman house he did not look. There the country spread out in a wide, cultivated, varicolored plain, with the mountains bounding it far away. To the right of the village was the little cemetery where his wife lay buried, and near it the Lutheran church to which they had both belonged, but he glanced at neither. Sometimes he could see John Hartman helping his wife from the carriage when they returned from church, or stamping the snow from his feet before he stepped into his buggy in the stable yard. Often, at this sight, when there was no one within hearing, William waved his arms and shouted, as though nothing but a wild sound could express his emotion. He was not entirely free from the superstitions in which Bevy and many other Millerstonians believed, superstitions long since seared upon the souls of a persecuted generation in the fatherland. He recited the strange verse, supposed to ward away evil,—

and he carried about with him a little spray of five-finger grass as a charm.

When John Hartman drove along the mountain road, his broad shoulders almost filling his buggy, William had more than once shouted an insane accusation at him. This Millerstown did not know. Koehler never spoke thus unless they were alone, and Hartman told no one of the encounter. One is not likely to tell the world that he has been accused of stealing, even though the accuser is himself known to be a madman and a thief. But John Hartman came presently to avoid the mountain road.

After a while William roused himself and fed his chickens and looked once more at the house of John Hartman. There was smoke rising from the chimney, and tears came into William's eyes, as though the smoke had drifted across the fields and had blinded him. Suddenly he struck the sharp paling a blow with his hard hand and spoke aloud, not with his usual faltering and mumbling tongue, but clearly and straightforwardly. William had found a help and a defense.

"I will tell him!" cried he. "This day I will tell my son, Alvin!"

All the long, snowy Christmas morning, Alvin sat about the house. He did not read because he had no books, and besides, he did not care much for books. Alvin was a very handsome boy, but he did not have much mind. He did not sing or whistle on this Christmas morning because he was not cheerful; he did not whittle because whittling would have wasted both knife and stick, and his father would have reproved him. He did not walk out because he was not an active boy like David Hartman, and he did not visit because he was not liked in Millerstown. He did not take a boy's part in the games; he was afraid to swim and dive; he whined when he was hurt.

He looked out the window toward the Hartman house with a vague envy of David, who had so much while he had so little. He watched his father's parsimonious preparation of the simple meal—how Grandmother Gaumer and Bevy Schnepp would have exclaimed at a Christmas dinner of butcher's ham!

"Oh, the poor souls!" Grandmother Gaumer would have cried. "I might easily have invited them to us to eat!"

"Where does the money go, then?" Bevy would have demanded. "He surely earns enough to have anyhow a chicken on Christmas! Where does he put his money? No sugar in the coffee! Just potatoes fried in ham fat for vegetables!"

All the long afternoon, also, Alvin sat about the house. He did not think again of the Hartmans; he did not think of Katy Gaumer, who thought so frequently of him; he thought of the red tie and wished that he had money to buy it.

All the long afternoon his father huddled close to the other side of the stove and muttered to himself as though he were preparing whatever he meant to tell Alvin. It must be either a very puzzling or a very long story, or one which required careful rehearsing. When the sun, setting in a clear sky, had touched the top of a mountain far across the plain, he began to speak suddenly, as though he had given to himself the departure of day for a signal. He did not make an elaborate account of the strange events he had to relate; on the contrary, he could hardly have omitted a word and have had his meaning clear. He said little of Alvin's mother; he drew no deductions; he simply told the story.

"Alvin!" cried he, sharply.

Alvin looked up. His head had sunk on his breast; he was at this moment half asleep. He was startled not alone by the tone of his father's voice, but by his father's straightened shoulders, by his piercing glance.

"I am going to tell you something!"

Alvin looked at his father a little eagerly. Perhaps his father was going to give him a present, after all. It would take only a quarter to buy the red tie. But it was a very different announcement which William had to make. He began with an alarming statement.

"After school closes you are to work at the furnace. I let you do nothing too long already, Alvin!"

"At the furnace!" Alvin's astonishment and alarm made him cry out. He hated the sight of Oliver Kuhns and Billy Knerr when they came home all grimy and black.

"I will tell you something," said his father again. "Listen good, Alvin!"

Alvin needed no such command to make him hearken. Alvin had not much will, but he was determining with all his power that he would never, never work in the furnace. He did not observe how his father's cheeks had paled above his black beard, and how steadily he kept his eyes upon his son. The story William had to tell was not that of a man whose mind was gone.

"You know the church?" said William.

"Of course."

"I mean the Lutheran church where I used to go, where my pop went."

"Yes."

"You go in at the front of the church, but the pulpit is at the other end. There were once long ago two windows, one on each side of the pulpit. They went almost down to the floor. From there the sun shone in the people's eyes. You can't remember that, Alvin. That was before your time."

Alvin sat still, sullenly. This conversation was, after all, only of a piece with his father's strange mutterings; it had to do with no red necktie.

"But now the Sunday School is there and those windows are gone this long time. One is a door into the Sunday School, the other is a wall. I built that wall, Alvin."

William paused as though for some comment, but Alvin said nothing.

"I was sitting where I am sitting now one evening and she [his wife] was sitting where you are sitting and you were running round, and the preacher climbed the hill to us and he came in and he said to me, 'William,' he said, 'it is decided that the big window is to be walled up. When can you do it?' That was the way he said it, Alvin. I said to him, 'I can do it to-morrow. I had other work for the afternoon at Zion Church, but I can put it off.' She could have told you that that was just what he said and what I said. I was in the congregation and there was at that time no other mason but me in Millerstown. It was to be made all smooth, so that nobody could ever tell there was a window there. Then the preacher, he said to me,—she could tell you that, too, if she were here,—he said, 'Come in the morning and I will give you the key of the communion cupboard,' the little cupboard in the wall, Alvin. There the communion set was kept. It was silver, real silver, all shiny." William's hands began to tremble and he moistened his dry lips. William spoke of objects which were to him manifestly holy. His son bent his head now, not idly and indifferently, but stubbornly. He remembered the names which the boys had shouted at his father; with all his soul he recoiled from hearing his father's confession. "There was a silver pitcher, so high, and a silver plate and a silver cup on a stem like a goblet. The preacher put it away there and he locked the door always.

"But he gave me the key and I went to my work. I thought once I would have to open the door and I stuck the key in the lock. It was a funny key.

"But I didn't need to open the door. I took my dinner along—she could tell you that. But I didn't need to open the door, and I took the key out again and put it in my pocket, and when I finished I swept everything up nice and locked the church door and came down the pike. It was night already and I went to the preacher and gave him the two keys, the church key and the other, and got my money. That quick he paid me, Alvin. He said to me, 'Well, I guess you had a quiet day, William,' and I said, 'Yes, nobody looked in at me but a little one.' That is what I said to the preacher then, Alvin, exactly that, but it was not true. But I thought it was true.

"Then I came home and I told her how nice and smooth I had made it—to this day, you cannot see it was a window there. Now, listen, Alvin!"

The sunset sky was darkening, a rising wind rattled the door in its latch. The little house was lonely on a winter night, even a bright night like this. The boy began to be frightened, his father looked at him with such dagger-like keenness.

"So it went for three weeks, Alvin, and then it was Sunday morning and here I sat and there she sat and you were running round, and it came a knock at the door and there was the preacher. I was studying my lesson for the Sunday School. It was about Ananias. I had learned the answers and the Golden Text, but it was not yet time to go. I always went to church; I liked to go to church. Then there came this knocking, Alvin, and it was the preacher. I thought perhaps he had come to give her the communion while she wasn't very well and couldn't go down through the snow. The preacher came in and he looked at me.

"'William,' said the preacher to me, 'do you remember how I gave you the key to the cupboard when you fixed the wall?'

"'Why, yes,' I said. 'Of course!'

"'William,' said he to me, 'did you open the cupboard?'

"'Why, no,' I said. 'I didn't have to, Para [Pastor].'

"'Were you away from the church?'

"'No,' I said. 'I took my dinner. She can tell you that.'

"'Why, William,' said he to me, 'the communion set is gone! The communion set is gone,' he said, 'gone!'

"I went with him to the church, Alvin, and I looked into the cupboard. Everything was gone, Alvin, bag and all. Then I came home and after a while they came. They wanted to talk, they wanted me to tell them everything that had happened all day. But I couldn't tell them anything. I had built the wall and a little one had talked to me, that was all. There she sat and here I sat and it was dark. Then, Alvin, it came to me! When I got halfway up the window, it was too high to go farther, and I went out of the church to get boards and build a platform across chairs so that I could reach. I was gone some little time, and when I came back Hartman was going down the pike. It was Hartman that took the communion set."

Alvin moved toward the side of his chair, and away from his father.

"Then I got up and went down the hill, and into Hartman's house I walked. He was sitting by the table with his best clothes on to go to church and she was there, too. They were always rich; they had everything grand. I made tracks on her clean floor, and she looked sharp at me, but I did not care. I spoke right up to him.

"'When I was building the wall in the church,' I said, 'I went out for a few boards. In that time you were in the church and took the communion set.'

"He did not look at me, Alvin; he just sat there.

"'What would I do with a communion set?' he said after a while to me.

"'I do not know what you would do with it,' I said back to him, 'but you have it. You took it. God will punish you like Ananias.'

"Then, Alvin—" William laid a hand on his son's shrinking arm. "He went to the preacher, and the preacher came to me and said I must be quiet. That the preacher said to me! Then I went to church and prayed out loud before all the people that God would punish the wicked. I did not mention any names, Alvin; I obeyed the preacher in that! But God did not punish him. Everything gets better and better for him all the time. Now, I will punish him, Alvin, and you will help me. I have paid a lot to detectives, but I have not yet enough. He must be watched; we must have proof. I cannot save so much any more because I have not so much work. Now, if you work at the furnace you will make a dollar a day. It will take all we can earn, Alvin, all. I did without things that I need; I have saved all I can, but I cannot save enough."

William broke off suddenly. The room was quite dark; where no light was needed, none was made in William Koehler's house. William rose and went stumbling about and lit the lamp, the lamp which Katy saw gleaming against the dark side of the mountain. In its light poor William gazed at his son with yearning. He seemed now perfectly sane.

Then William spoke in a hollow, astonished voice, the lamp rattling in his hand.

"Don't you believe he took it, Alvin?"

"Why, no," stammered Alvin. "What would he want with it?"

CHAPTER V
ANOTHER CHRISTMAS DAY

The Hartmans had asked no guests to their feast. John had long since separated himself from the friends of his youth; as for Cassie, the thought of the footprints of Christmas guests on her flag walk and her carefully scrubbed porches would have made the day even more uncomfortable than it was. Moreover, one could not entertain Christmas company in the kitchen, however fine that kitchen might be, and in this wintry weather fires would have to be made in the parlor and the dining-room.

"Company would track dust so for me," Cassie would have said if any one had suggested that some companions of his own age might do David good and might not be a bad thing for his elders. "When you have fires, you have ashes, and I would then have to clean my house in the middle of winter when you cannot clean the carpets right."

Cassie Hartman was a beautiful woman, how beautiful Millerstown, which set a higher value upon mere prettiness than upon beauty, did not know. Her figure was tall and full and she bore herself with grace and dignity. Her face with its even features and its full gray eyes was the face of an austere saint, although her eyes, lifting when you addressed her, seemed rather to hide her real character than reveal it. But her character was austere and reserved, of that you were sure.

If Cassie's soul was a consecrated one, the gods to whom one would have assigned her worship were Cleanliness and Order. The very progress of her husband and son about the house annoyed her because it was masculine and untidy. David knew better than to enter the kitchen with muddy shoes, but his father was not so careful; therefore both trod upon an upper layer of slightly worn rag carpet, superimposed upon the bright and immaculate lower layer. In all other details but one of the management of her house Cassie had her way. Her husband refused stubbornly to leave the great walnut bed and the large room in which he slept for a smaller room at the back of the house, as Cassie wished, so that the great best bedrooms might be garnished day and night with their proper spreads and counterpanes and shams.

Each of Cassie's days and hours had its appointed task. She could have told how her time would be spent from now on until the last hour before her passing, when the preacher would come in the proper Lutheran fashion to give her the communion. The Church required no such ceremony, but Cassie was a formalist in religion and required it for herself.

So the three Hartmans ate alone in their broad kitchen, John Hartman at one end of the table, Cassie far away at the other, and David midway between them. John Hartman's eyes were hardly lifted above his food; he was an intolerably silent person. Cassie's eyes roved everywhere, from her stove, which she could scarcely wait to blacken, toward her husband who ate carelessly, and toward her son, who devoured his drumstick with due regard for the clean cloth. The cloth was spotless and would probably remain spotless, for an extra white cover had been laid beneath the plates of John and David. But to-morrow it would go into the tub, none the less. It was too good to be used every day, and it could not be put away bearing even the slight wrinkles produced by unfolding. Cassie had no more to say than her husband. There was really nothing for Cassie to say. Her mental processes involved herself and her house, they responded to no inspiration from without.

As for little David, he said nothing either. Katy Gaumer had been right when she said that David was a cross boy. David was cross and sullen. To-day, however, he was only solemn. David was deeply concerned about his sins. He was not only a sinner in general, but he had sinned in a very particular way, and he was unhappy. The turkey did not taste as a Christmas turkey should, and his second slice of mince-pie was bitter.

When John Hartman had eaten all he could, he rose and put on his coat and went out to his great barn to feed his stock. He went silently, as was his wont.

When David had finished the last morsel of pie which he was able to swallow, he, too, put on his hat and went toward the door, moving silently and slouchingly. There he stood and nervously kicked the sill. His eyes, gray like his mother's, looked out from under frowning, knitted brows; he thrust his hands deep into his pockets and looked down at the floor. This was Christmas Day; his parents had treated him generously; he was convinced that he ought to confess to them his great wickedness. He felt as though he might cry, and as though crying, if he had a shoulder to lean on, would be a soothing and healing operation. The assault of Katy Gaumer had sunk deep into his heart, as was natural since he thought of Katy night and day, since he saw her wherever she went in her red dress, now scolding, now laughing, and perpetually in motion. He had fled to the attic of the schoolroom yesterday because she had not spoken to him or looked at him, had even passed him with her weight planted for an instant heavily on his foot without even acknowledging his presence. And to the attic she had followed him and had there taunted and insulted him! She had no business to say that he was cross and ugly; he would be nice enough to her if she would return the compliment. As for Grandmother Gaumer's cakes, he had better cakes at home than Grandmother Gaumer could bake!

David's heart was sore, and David was inexpressibly lonely and miserable. He was now certain that he would be happy if he could confess his sins to his mother.

He forgot the last occasion of his appeal to her. Then his finger had been cut, and he had been dizzy and had seized hold of her, and the blood had fallen down on her new silk dress. He forgot her reproof; he remembered only that he needed some sort of human tenderness. His father did not often speak to him, but women were made, or should be made, of different stuff from men. He had seen Susannah Kuhns sit with her great Ollie upon her lap, and Ollie was older than he was by a year. He had heard Katy Gaumer, who had been so outrageously cruel to him, cry over a sick kitten, and Katy was herself often rocked like a baby on Grandmother Gaumer's knee.

David forgot now not only the cut finger, but other repulses. He had no claim on Grandmother Gaumer's embrace, and he would have hated to have to sit on Susannah Kuhns's knee, but upon this tall, beautiful person sitting by the table, he had a claim. Moreover, her embraces would have been pleasant.

"Mom!" said David.

Cassie's eyes were now on the dishes before her. She liked to plan her mode of attack upon a piece of work, and then proceed swiftly, keeping her mind a blank to everything but the pleasure of seeing order grow where disorder had been. Thus she liked to go through her fine house, sweeping the rich carpets, polishing the carved furniture, letting the sunlight in only long enough to show each infamous dust mote. Cassie was in the midst of such planning now; she saw the dishes neatly piled, the hot suds in the pan, her sleeves rolled above her elbows. She did not answer David, did not even hear him.

"Mom!" said David again. He did not know now exactly what he had meant to say. The necessity for confession had dwindled to a necessity for the sound of his mother's voice. It was dismal to live in a house with companions who seemed deaf and blind to one's existence. She must speak to him!

At the second call, Cassie looked at her son. Cassie recognized dirt and disorder, but she did not recognize any need of the human soul. The needs of her own soul had been, Cassie thought, cruelly denied. At any rate, its power of perception had failed.

"You stamp on that sill again and I'll have to scrub it, David! To spoil things on Christmas!"

Cassie's voice contained no threat of punishment; it was merely mildly exclamatory. The tone of it was not vibrant but wooden. It might have been rich and beautiful in youth; now it expressed no emotion; it was flat, empty. She did not ask David what he wanted, or why he addressed her; she did not even wonder why he stopped in the doorway and stared at her. She only frowned at him, until he closed the door, himself outside. David had all the clothes he could wear, all the food he could eat; he had the finest house, the richest father and the most capable mother in Millerstown; what more could he wish to make him happy? His mother did not speculate as to whether he was happy or not.

David crossed the yard in the freshly fallen snow and slammed the gate behind him. Then he went toward the mountain road, and started to climb, passing the house of the Koehlers, where William sat on one side of the stove and Alvin on the other, the one muttering to himself, the other half asleep. David kicked the snow as he walked, his head bent lower and lower on his breast. He could see Katy Gaumer like a sprite in her red dress with her flashing eyes and her pointing finger; he could see her smiling at Alvin Koehler, whom he hated without dreaming that in that son of a demented and dishonest father Katy Gaumer could have any possible interest.

As he started up the steepest part of the hill, he began to talk aloud.

"I want her!" said poor little David. "I want Katy! I want Katy!"

Presently David left the road, and climbing over the worm fence into the woodland, struck off diagonally among the trees. Still far above him, at the summit of the little mountain, there was a rough pile of rocks which formed a tiny cairn or cave. Before it was a small platform, parapeted by a great boulder. Generations past had named the spot, without any apparent reason, the "Sheep Stable." It was a favorite resort of David Hartman. Here, in secret, far above Millerstown, he carried on the wicked practices which he had meant to confess to his mother. From the little plateau one could look for miles and miles over a wide, rich, beautiful plain, could see the church spires of a dozen villages, the smoke curling upward from three or four great blast furnaces, set in the midst of wide fields, and could look far beyond the range of hills which bounded the view of William Koehler on his lower level, to another range. The Pennsylvania German made his home only in fertile spots. When other settlers passed the thickly forested lands because of the great labor of felling the trees and preparing the soil, he selected the sections bearing the tallest trees and had as his own the fertile land forever.

David did not look out over the wide, pure expanse upon which a few flakes were still falling and beyond which the sun would soon sink gorgeously, nor did he see the purple shadows under the pine trees, nor observe the glancing motions of a squirrel, watching him from a bough near by. He determined, desperately, firmly, that he would repent no more; he would now return to his evil ways and get from them what satisfaction he could.

He crept on hands and knees into the little cave and felt round under a mass of dried leaves until his hands encountered the instruments of his evil practices. Then David drew them forth, a stubby pipe, which he had smoked once and which had made him deathly ill, and a pack of cards, about whose mysterious and delightful use he knew nothing. He sat with them in his hands on the sloping rock, wishing, poor little David, that he knew how to be wickeder than he was!

Having fed his stock, John Hartman tramped for a little while round his fields in the snow, then he returned to the kitchen and sat down by the window with a newspaper. Cassie lay asleep on the settle. Custom forbade her working on Christmas Day, and she never read, even the almanac. At her, her husband looked once or twice inscrutably, then he laid his head on the back of his tall chair and slept also. It was a scene at which Katy Gaumer would have pointed as proof of the unutterable stupidity of Millerstown.

When her husband slept, Cassie opened her eyes and looked at him with as steady a gaze as that which he had bent upon her. Her mouth set itself in a firm, straight line, her eyes deepened and darkened, her hands, folded upon her breast, grasped her flesh. Surely between these two was some great barrier of offense, given or suffered, of strange, wounded pride, or insufferable humiliation! Presently Cassie's lids fell; she turned her cheek against the hard back of the old settle and so fell asleep also.

John Hartman owned four farms and a great stretch of woodland and a granite quarry on the far side of the mountain and two farms and two peach orchards and an apple orchard on this. A generation ago a large deposit of fine iron ore had been discovered upon a tract of land owned by his father. The deposit was not confined to his fields, but extended to the lands of his neighbors. But while they sold ore and spent their money, John Hartman's father, as shrewd a business man as his son, sold and saved, and laid the foundation of his fortune. In a few years the discovery of richer, more easily mined deposits in the West and the cheap importation of foreign ores made the Millerstown ore for the time not worth the mining. Hartman the elder then covered his mine breaches and planted timber, and the growth set above the treasure underground was now thick and valuable. John Hartman was also a director in a county bank; he owned the finest, largest house in Millerstown; he had a handsome and a capable wife, and a son who was strong in body and who had a good mind. Apparently his position in life was secure, his comfort certain.

John Hartman, however, was neither comfortable nor secure. The long-past accusations of a poor, half-crazed workingman filled his waking hours with apprehension and his nights with remorse. Of William Koehler and his accusation John Hartman was afraid, for William's accusation was, at least in part, true.

John Hartman had been walking away from the church on that bright November day years ago, when his own David and Alvin Koehler were little children and Katy Gaumer not much more than a baby. He had upon him, as William had said, an air of guilt; he had refused to reply to William's shouted greeting; he was at that moment rapidly becoming, if he was not already, what William called him, a thief.

On that November day, a little while before William had shouted at him, he had come down the pike and had seen William leave the church to get the boards for his platform, and had thereupon entered the church with no other impulse than the vague motions of a man sick at heart. A sin of his earlier youth had risen suddenly from the grave where he thought it buried, and now confronted him. In his pocket lay an accusing, threatening letter, written with pale ink upon poor paper in an ignorant way. The amount of money which it demanded, large as it was, did not trouble him, since he was already possessor of his inheritance and growing daily richer; it was the horror of the discovery of his sin. Once cured of his obsession he had become a devout man, had taken pleasure in the services of the church of his fathers, attending all her meetings and contributing to all her causes. He had married a good woman from a neighboring village, who knew nothing of the year he had spent away from Millerstown; he had had a son; he was wholly happy.

He had gone during the latter part of the year which he spent away from home, as a way of escaping from himself, to Europe. He had been only a few weeks ashore, but he had seen during that time civilizations different from anything he had dreamed of. He was most moved by great churches—he saw Notre Dame of Amiens and Notre Dame of Paris—and by the few great English estates of which he caught glimpses in his rapid journey to Liverpool. That was the way a man should live, planted in one place, like a great oak tree, the center of a wide group—a wife, children, dependents. He should have his garden, his woodland, his great house, his stables, his beautiful horses; he should pass the home place on to a son who would perpetuate his name. With such a home and with a worthy church to worship in, a man could ask for nothing else in the world.

Repentant, healed, John Hartman had returned to Millerstown. There he had married and had built his house, with great rooms at the front and smaller rooms at the back for the servants who should make his wife's life easy and dignified and should help to care for the little brothers and sisters whom David was to have. Cassie had had a hard youth; her father had been a disgrace to his children; she was quiet and stern and not hopeful, even though John Hartman had lifted her to so high a place, of very great happiness in this life. But Cassie's nature had seemed to change in the glow of John Hartman's affection and in the enjoyment of the luxuries with which he surrounded her. She became less silent; she met her husband at times with a voluntary caress, which opened in his heart new springs of happiness.