She did not know him; but he had not forgotten that voluptuous figure nor those melting blue eyes.  He preferred his requests, looking through the doorway at the same time to make sure that she had no protector.  Katrine brought the stranger a gourd of water, and offered him a chair.  She did not see the baleful eyes he threw after her as she went about her household duties.  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.  His dog sat by the hearth with a look of almost intelligent sympathy, and whined as his master entered the room.  He raised Katrine and held her in his arms like a child, covered her face with kisses, and implored her to speak.  She seemed to be in a fearful dream, and shrunk from some imagined danger in the extremest terror.  Gradually her sobs became less frequent, her tremors ceased, and she smiled upon the manly face that met hers, as though she had only suffered from an imaginary fright.  But when she felt her hair floating upon her shoulders, saw the almost speaking face of the dog, Bruno, and became conscious of the cries of the neglected child, the wave of agony swept over her again, and she could utter only broken ejaculations.  As word after word came from her lips, the unhappy husband’s flesh tingled; his hair stiffened with horror; every nerve seemed to be strung with a new and maddening tension.  There was for him no such thing as fatigue, no distance, no danger,—­no law, no hereafter, no God.  All thought and feeling were drowned in one wild desire for vengeance,—­vengeance swift, terrible, and final.

He first caressed the dog as though he had been a brother; he put his arms about the shaggy neck, and shook each faithful paw; he made his wife caress him also.  “God be praised, dear Katrine, for your protector, the dog!” said he.  “Come, now, Bruno!”

Katrine saw him depart with his dog and gun; but if she guessed his errand, she did not dare remonstrate.  He walked off rapidly,—­the dog in advance, now and then baying as though he were on a trail.

In the night he returned, and he smiled grimly as he set down the rifle in its accustomed corner.  His wife was waiting for him with intense anxiety.  It was marvellous to her that he was so cheerful.  He trotted her upon his knee, pressed her a hundred times to his bosom, kissed her forehead, lips, and cheeks, called her his pretty Kate, his dear wife, and every endearing name he knew.  So they sat, like lovers in their teens, till the purpling east told of a new day.