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Updated: May 15, 2025
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!"
It proved of no use to try to induce Hans Dietman to keep poor Carl's secret. He saw no reason why a murderer should be sheltered from disgrace. To have his name held up for the deserved execration seemed to Hans the only punishment left for one who had thus evaded the hangman; and he proceeded to inflict this punishment to the extent of his ability.
The body was laid once more on the narrow pallet where it had slept for its last few weeks on earth, and the two men stood by its side, discussing what should next be done, how the necessary steps could be taken with least possible publicity, when suddenly they heard the sound of horses' feet and wheels, and looking out they saw Hans Dietman and his wife driving rapidly into the yard. "Mein Gott!
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.
"No," said Mrs. Dietman, tearfully; but her husband exclaimed, in a vindictive tone: "I see not why it is to be covered in secret. He is murderer. It is to be sent vord to Mayence he vas found." "Yes, they ought to know there," said John, slowly; "but there is no need for it to be known here. He has injured no one here." "No," exclaimed Farmer Weitbreck. "He haf harm nobody here; he vas goot.
As he said this a strange look flitted swiftly across his face, and was gone before any eye but a loving woman's had noted it. It did not escape Carlen's, and she fell into a reverie of wondering what possible double meaning could have underlain his words. "Did you know Mr. Dietman in Germany?" she asked. This was the name of the farmer to whose house he had been sent on an errand.
I haf ask him to stay and haf home in my house." It was a strange story. Early in the spring, it seemed, about six weeks before Hans Dietman and his wife Gretchen were married, a shepherd on the farm adjoining Gretchen's father's had been murdered by a fellow-laborer on the same farm.
But there came one day a letter to John that awoke even in Carlen's motherly and contented heart strange echoes from that past which she had thought forever left behind. It was a letter from Hans Dietman, who still lived on the Pennsylvania farm, and who had been recently joined there by a younger brother from Germany.
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