Rauchen and his daughter were now more solitary than ever.  The father had forgotten the roaring stories he used to tell to the neighboring peasants, over foaming flagons of ale, at the little inn; he sat at his mill-door and smoked incessantly.  Katrine shunned the festivities in which she was once queen, and her manner, though kindly, was silent and reserved; she went to church, it is true, but she wore a look of settled sorrow that awed curiosity and even repelled sympathy.  But scandal is a plant that needs no root in the earth; like the houseleek, it can thrive upon air; and those who separate themselves the most entirely from the world are apt, for that very reason, to receive the larger share of its attention.  The village girls looked first with pity, then with wonder, and at length with aversion, upon the gentle and unfortunate Katrine.  Careless as she was with regard to public opinion, she saw not without pain the altered looks of her old associates, and before long she came to know the cause.  A cruel suspicion had been whispered about, touching her in a most tender point.  It was not without reason, so the gossip ran, that she had refused so eligible an offer of marriage Schoenfeld’s.  The story reached the ears of Rauchen, at last.  With a fierce energy, such as he had never exhibited before, he tracked it from cottage to cottage, until he came to Schoenfeld’s housekeeper, who refused to give her authority.  The next market-day Rauchen encountered the former suitor and publicly charged him with the slander, in such terms as his baseness deserved.  Schoenfeld, thrown off his guard by the sudden attack, struck his adversary a heavy blow; but the miller rushed upon him, and left him to be carried home, a bundle of aches and bruises.  After this the tongues of the gossips were quiet; no one was willing to answer for guesses or rumors at the end of Rauchen’s staff; and the father and daughter resumed their monotonous mode of life.

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.  The gayety of former years came back; cheerful songs and merry laughter were heard in the lately silent rooms.  Rauchen himself grew younger, especially after the birth of a grandson, and often resumed his old place at the inn, telling the old stories with the old gusto over the ever-welcome ale.  But one morning, not long after, he was found dead in his bed; a smile was on his face, and his limbs were stretched out as in peaceful repose.