“The child is dead,” she said.  He understood that she said:  “Between me and the murderer of my child there can never be anything more in common, neither on earth nor in heaven.”

He rose.  A word of forgiveness might perhaps have saved him!  Perhaps!  Who knows!  He staggered back into the bedroom.  Christiane did not see him go, but she felt that his presence no longer profaned the place in which lay the sacred image of her maternal sorrow.  Weeping softly, she sank down over her dead child.

In the meantime Apollonius had begun the decorating of the tower-roof of St. George’s.  He had built a scaffold, fastened his ladder to the broach-post, put a hempen ring on it, attached his tackle to the ring and hung his swinging-seat on the pulley.  The tin ornamentation, which consisted of single long pieces, was intended to represent two garlands festooned around the spire.

Apollonius was industrious at his work.  The mastertinsmith, who was anxious to see his decorations completed as soon as possible, had less ground to complain of Apollonius than the latter had to be dissatisfied with him.  At first the master urged Apollonius; soon Apollonius had to drive the master on.  A part of the top garland which was to hang in a festoon over the door in the roof was lacking.  Apollonius could not finish his work until he had the material for it.  A neighboring village required his services for minor repairs.  Leaving his tackle hanging from the tower of St. George’s he went to Brambach.

The next day old Valentine knocked at the living-room door.  He had already been there several times and gone away again.  His entire being expressed uneasiness.  He was so preoccupied with something that he had on his mind that he thought he must have failed to hear the answer to his knock and laid his ear to the key-hole as if he assumed that it must still be there to hear if he only listened hard enough.  His anxiety aroused him from his absent-mindedness.  He knocked a second and a third time and, still receiving no answer, plucked up courage to open the door and go in.  The young wife had avoided him for some time.  She did so now, too, but today he had to speak to her.  She intentionally sat at some distance from the windows, near the bedroom door.  The old man did not perceive that she was as uneasy as he, and that his presence made her even more so.  He apologized for his intrusion.  When she made a movement to leave the room, he assured her that he would not remain long and that he would not have forced himself upon her had he not been impelled to do so by something which was perhaps very important.  He hoped that it was not so, but still, it might be.  She listened and looked more and more anxiously now at the windows, now at the door.  Her demeanor showed plainly that she hoped if he had anything to say to her he would say it as quickly as he could.

Valentine began:  “Master Fritz is on the roof of St. George’s.  I saw him just now in the church-yard.”