Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 2, 2025
The two men from Waltheim passed this first winter as contentedly as the autumn, and the same contentment lasted into the spring, when the avalanches came crashing down the mountain sides. When the danger of snowslides was somewhat less, some travelers began to come through the pass, and one of the first who came was Hallheimer, the trader.
Fausch, whose day's work was done, put his short pipe between his teeth, and wandered along the road toward Waltheim, through the sunshine, stretching out his bare, black arms before him, he bathed them in the light, and enjoyed seeing how every motion he made broke some of the golden threads. Just then he saw the little boy, Cain, coming out of the woods through the beautiful shadows.
The rumbling of the wagon awoke the prying eyes of Waltheim. Each one beckoned or called to the others. It was as if the little group were running the gauntlet. Fausch and Cain walked with lowered heads, the smith, because it was his surly fashion, the boy, through bashfulness, because he knew that now all eyes and tongues were busy with him once more.
The child got no other answer. But during the next few weeks, a curious wave from Waltheim reached the smithy. The village people grew quite disturbed over Stephen Fausch's whim, to make his boy bear the name of a sinner. They might have worked themselves into this state long ago, or even when the boy was christened, but at that time, the little commotion had quickly died away.
But because no familiar face reminded them of the old days at Waltheim, the memory of what had driven them away from there faded imperceptibly from Fausch's mind as well as from the boy's. Cain heard no more scornful speeches or mysterious whispers.
He looked so unfriendly, that those who met him did not care to accost him. It was about the time in the forenoon when the Waltheim children were let out of school.
But Simmen hit the table another blow as if he were impatient all the same the affair was not quite to his taste. When Hallheimer, the trader, came back from Italy, he heard something on the mountain which astonished him; he was not to sell the smithy at Waltheim, for Stephen Fausch was going back to his old place within a short time. The trader asked what had happened. He got no answer.
Nevertheless something of the picture that he had seen that evening remained in Fausch's mind. The impression lingered for days and weeks, and often occupied his thoughts. Once or twice he asked Katharine about the boy: "What is the little fellow doing? Do you still feed him so well?" The time passed in Waltheim as it does everywhere.
Indeed she handled the blacksmith's son with the same care and tenderness with which, in her youth, she had tended the child of her aristocratic employers. Ever since the evening when he was born she had kept the boy with her; for it was on that very evening that the mother's lingering death began. The doctor came from Waltheim, for the smith himself brought him; but he could do no good.
Even Hallheimer did not come, and just as both Simmen and Fausch began to wonder at his absence, the smith got a letter saying that the trader was confined to the house by a severe illness, so that not only had he been unable to make his usual trips to Italy, but the smithy at Waltheim was still unsold, because he had been unable to attend to such business.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking