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Updated: June 3, 2025
Only then did the rumor that he had heard occur to Hallheimer: the rumor that the smith's wife had been over-intimate with her husband's brother. At the top of the stone steps of the house there now appeared a woman who looked very stout, because she wore so many petticoats. With an important and mysterious look, she nodded to the smith. "It has come, Stephen Fausch. You have a boy.
The next morning Hallheimer had already started southward, when Cain came out of the milk house and fell into the hands of three workingmen belonging to the hospice, who were busy at the house. It came over him that they all stared at him, and passed some word back and forth among them and then laughed, as if they were laughing at him. He greeted them, paused and said: "Already busy, so early?"
Cain and Katharine did not find out about his plans until Hallheimer had come again and again, when at last, one evening, Fausch signed the lease which the trader brought him for the blacksmith shop on the mountain. He returned after dark that evening from Waltheim, where he had gone with Hallheimer to settle the transaction. He found Cain with Katharine in the kitchen.
He was wearing his stiff, greasy leather apron, a dirty shirt, and fresh coal dust had already settled in his tangled curly hair. "Lord!" laughed the stout landlord, Simmen, who was leaning against one of the wooden pillars and looking into the workshop, "Hallheimer had no eye for beauty, when he sent you to us."
"He is going to have a queer name, the boy," he went on. He was uncommonly talkative, though he spoke slowly and with difficulty: "A strange name. He is to be called Cain." As he said this, he came out from behind the wagon and approached Hallheimer, looking at him with a grim laugh. "What what's that you say?" stammered the little man. The smith nodded. "Yes, yes," he said.
"If I can ever manage it, I will go to Italy myself," he added, and turned toward the south, gazing into the distance and seeming quite to forget the trader and his wagon. Hallheimer packed up his property and took the reins. "I must go," said he, "Goodby, Stephen Fausch." And then he drove on. The smith did not take the trouble to look after him.
Hallheimer now put an end to the interview. "'Well Good-by, Fausch," said he, "I'll be jogging along." "Good-by!" said the smith. But as the other turned toward his wagon, Fausch came slowly and clumsily out of the workshop and motioned to him. The trader's horse had already started. Hallheimer reined him in sharply. Fausch came over to him and leaned his blackened arms on the rack of the wagon.
Hallheimer, who had spent the night at the smithy, was there, ready to receive the key. He was to sell the blacksmith shop among the woods for Fausch. Now, for the first time in many years, the blackened door of the workshop was closed, the shutters were drawn over the dim windows, and the house already looked dark and dead.
Then the trader wanted to go over to the tavern. Simmen, with whom he was a profitable and quite a favorite guest, because he always brought news, greeted him with "Hullo," and Hallheimer soon had the conversation precisely where he wanted it. "How goes it with the smith?" he asked. "He's an odd stick," said Simmen. "But he can work!" Hallheimer grew so eager that his little eyes flashed.
Cain and Katharine had paused, with their backs toward the road, the smith having detained them by a word. Hallheimer, who was looking up at them, saw that they were stopping for something important; for they stood for a moment leaning forward, as if the smith were saying something to them that they found difficult to understand. "You!"
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