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Updated: April 30, 2025
Vincenza was inwardly angry. What a bull-headed, unfriendly man he was, the smith! Cain did not know what to make of his father. Was he displeased with something? What could have come over him? He did not know that Stephen Fausch was always looking for him when he was not by.
Fausch knew as well as anybody else that people left Cain no peace. The boy had gone through the secondary school at Waltheim, and was now learning the blacksmith's trade with his father. Thus he was free from the jeers and teasing of his schoolmates, but yet the smith saw that the disgrace clung to him.
Fausch sank into the chair, close in front of her: he was now like a block, barring her way. "Don't try it," said he, "you know me don't you try to run away, I should have you brought back!" He threw his arm over the back of the chair, and the sudden movement made her shrink again, as if he had meant to strike her. "No, no, I will stay," she whispered, trembling.
She is locked in, upstairs now, until she grows tamer but you must send the boy away, and soon too." Simmen's anger was evident in his hasty, broken speech. He and Vincenza must have had a stormy time together. Fausch looked down and made no answer. His thoughts held full sway over him. Simmen thought that he was considering what had just been said to him.
After the trader had greeted Fausch, who was working with Cain in the shop, he leaned against the grimy doorpost and followed with his eyes the movements of the two smiths. Fausch's work was like the heavy downward blow of a weight, Cain's like the swift flight of a feather.
He could not say another word, nor even look at the three men. With drooping head, he slipped away. Soon afterward he was standing in the workshop, where Fausch was busy making a supply of horse shoes ready for the summer. The smith had not heard him come in, but, turning around by chance, discovered him, standing in a corner, with his arms hanging limply and his head on his breast.
But it was such a strange, uncanny laugh, that it entirely changed the expression of his face. It was neither merry nor scornful. Perhaps all the kindliness that Stephen Fausch had to give lay in that one laugh. His solitary eye looked larger and more quiet than usual. And as his gaze rested thus on them both at once, they felt as if he were trying to say: "So you you belong together, you two!"
As he was starting to go down, he grumbled over his shoulder: "You needn't have dragged me up here just for that." The tears sprang to Katharine's eyes. She stared after him, her whole face working. Then she went to the head of the stairs, and leaning over, she called quickly after him: "Here, Fausch!" "Yes?" he asked, pausing. "No one must call him that when he is big enough to know not that."
"You must make the child a present at the christening," said he, offering the goldpiece to the smith. But Stephen would not notice the trader's hand. The eager little old man was quite out of countenance. He laid the goldpiece on the window-sill of the workshop. "Take it to the child, Fausch, take it," he begged in his embarrassment.
The clerk looked up; as a newcomer he had already a nervous manner, and besides, the smith stood as close to him as if he had to guide his hand in writing. Stephen Fausch gave the child's name: "Cain Fausch." "Aren't you making a mistake?" asked the clerk. "Cain," repeated the smith.
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