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Frau Weitbreck glanced cautiously at the open door. She was frying sweet cakes in the boiling lard. Forgetting everything in her fear of being overheard, she went softly, with the dripping skimmer in her hand, across the kitchen, the fat falling on her shining floor at every step, and closed the door. Then she came close to her son, and said in a whisper, "The fader think it is goot."
Wilhelm was a mimic, it appeared; he was imitating the ridiculous speech, gait, gestures, of a man he had seen in the village that afternoon. "I sent you to village sooner as dis, if I haf known vat you are like ven you come back," said Farmer Weitbreck, wiping his eyes. And John echoed his father. "Upon my word, Wilhelm, you are a good actor. Why have you kept your light under a bushel so long?"
The other shepherd, Carl Lepmann, had disappeared, and was never again seen by any one who knew him, until this previous day, when he had entered the Dietmans' door bearing his message from the Weitbreck farm. At the first sight of his face, Gretchen Dietman had recognized him, thrown up her arms involuntarily, and cried out in German: "My God! the man that killed the shepherd!"
In the next instant he held Carlen's unconscious form in his arms; and when Farmer Weitbreck, half dazed, reached the foot of the stairs, the first sight which met his eyes was his daughter, held in her brother's arms, apparently lifeless, her head hanging over his shoulder. "Haf she seen him?" he whispered. "No!" said John.
By his help the haying had been done in not much more than two thirds the usual time; but when John Weitbreck, like a sensible fellow, said, "Now, we would better keep Alf on till harvest; there is plenty of odds-and-ends work about the farm he can help at, and we won't get his like again in a hurry," his father had cried out, "Mein Gott! It is that you tink I must be made out of money!
Farmer Weitbreck and his wife were both dead, and the estate had passed into the hands of strangers who had heard the story of Wilhelm, and knew that his body was buried somewhere on the farm; but in which field they neither asked nor cared, and there was no mourner to tell the story.
The famous Alf had never done so much in a day. Farmer Weitbreck chuckled as he looked on. "Vat now you say of dat Alf?" he said triumphantly to John; "vork he as dis man? Oh, but he make swing de hook!" John assented unqualifiedly to this praise of Wilhelm's strength and skill; but nevertheless he shook his head. "Ay, ay," he said, "I never saw his equal; but I like him not.
So soon he came in our kitchen yesterday my vife she knew him; she wait till I get home. Ve came ven it vas yet dark to let you know vot man vas in your house." Farmer Weitbreck and his son exchanged glances; each was too shocked to speak. Mr. and Mrs. Dietman looked from one to the other in bewilderment. "Maype you tink ve speak not truth," Hans continued.
I vill not keep dis man on so big wages to do vat you call odd-and-end vork. We do odd-and-end vork ourself." There was no discussion of the point. John Weitbreck knew better than ever to waste his time and breath or temper in trying to change a purpose of his father's or convince him of a mistake.
It would not appear possible that a man of so decent a seeming as Wilhelm could have come from Germany to America with so few personal belongings. Frau Weitbreck felt less at ease in her mind about him after she examined this pack. He had come straight from the ship to their house, he had said, when he arrived; had walked on day after day, going he knew not whither, asking mile by mile for work.
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