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His pistol was in his pocket, and still loaded; that fact precluded the idea of suicide. Moreover, upon examining more closely, a bullet-hole was found in his breast-bone, around which the parts were broken outwardly, showing that the ball must have entered from behind. It was clear that Stolzen had been murdered. The curse of Frau Proch had been most terribly fulfilled.
The jury unanimously acquitted Carl, and with his wife and boy he left the court-room. The verdict was approved by the spectators, for no man in the neighborhood was more universally loved and respected than Carl Proch.
The three years at length passed, and Carl Proch returned home, a trifle more sedate, perhaps, but the same noble, manly fellow. How warmly he was received by the constant Katrine it is not necessary to relate. Rauchen was not disposed to thwart his long-suffering daughter any further; and with his consent the young couple were speedily married, and lived in his house.
Ghastly wounds covered his head, and his arms and shoulders were livid with bruises. The neighboring peasants surrounded the apparently lifeless body, and listened with awe to the frenzied imprecations of Frau Proch upon the murderer of her son. "May he die in a foreign land," said she, lifting her withered hands to Heaven, "without wife to nurse him or priest to speak peace to his soul!
Carl accompanied her to the gate, and, after a furtive glance upward to the house-windows, bade her farewell, with a kiss, and turned homeward, feeling himself a man for the first time in his life. Frau Proch had seen the pantomime through the flowers that stood on the window-sill, not ill-pleased, and was waiting her son's return. An hour passed, and he did not come.
Circumstances soon pointed to Carl Proch as the perpetrator. A stranger, corresponding to the deceased in size and dress, had been seen, about the time of his disappearance, by the neighboring family, walking towards Proch's house; and on the evening of the same day an Irishman met Carl going at a rapid rate, with a gun on his shoulder, as though in furious pursuit of some one.
Stolzen had dropped from her firmament like a fallen and forgotten star. Secure in her unsuspecting innocence, she chirruped to her baby and resumed her sewing. That evening, when Carl Proch returned from his field, after his usual hard day's labor, he found his wife on the floor, sobbing, speechless, and the child, unnoticed, crying in his cradle.
"And Adams, at the Academy?" "He's gone out to buy a rope." "And Little O'Grady?" "He fell over in a dead faint. He's lying in it yet. But before he lost consciousness he made one suggestion " "What was it?" Dill paused. "Have you ever heard of a painter named Proch Prochnow?" he presently asked, with some disrelish. "A newcomer, I believe." "I don't think I have."
It was perhaps only a coincidence, but it struck the neighbors as very odd at least, that Carl Proch was the first man drawn for the army. He had no money to hire a substitute, and there was no alternative; he must serve his three years. This last blow was too much for his poor mother.
Carl Proch was an honest farmer, who tilled a small tract of crown land and thereby supported his aged mother. Faithful to his duties, he had never a thought of discontent, but was willing to plod on in the way his father had gone before him.
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