John was gone.  Flight was his usual refuge when he felt his temper becoming too much for him; but now his steps were quickened by an impulse of terrible fear.  Between him and his sister had always been a bond closer than is wont to link brother and sister.  Only one year apart in age, they had grown up together in an intimacy like that of twins; from their cradles till now they had had their sports, tastes, joys, sorrows in common, not a secret from each other since they could remember.  At least, this was true of John; was he to find it no longer true of Carlen?  He would know, and that right speedily.  As by a flash of lightning he thought he saw his father’s scheme,—­if Carlen were to wed this man, this strong and tireless worker, this unknown, mysterious worker, who wanted only shelter and home and cared not for money, what an invaluable hand would be gained on the farm!  John groaned as he thought to himself how little anything—­any doubt, any misgiving, perhaps even an actual danger—­would in his father’s mind outweigh the one fact that the man did not “vork for money.”

As he walked toward the house, revolving these disquieting conjectures, all his first suspicion and antagonism toward Wilhelm revived in full force, and he was in a mood well calculated to distort the simplest acts, when he suddenly saw sitting in the square stoop at the door the two persons who filled his thoughts, Wilhelm and Carlen,—­Wilhelm steadily at work as usual at his carving, his eyes closely fixed on it, his figure, as was its wont, rigidly still; and Carlen,—­ah! it was an unlucky moment John had taken to search out the state of Carlen’s feeling toward Wilhelm,—­Carlen sitting in a posture of dreamy reverie, one hand lying idle in her lap holding her knitting, the ball rolling away unnoticed on the ground; her other arm thrown carelessly over the railing of the stoop, her eyes fixed on Wilhelm’s bowed head.

John stood still and watched her,—­watched her long.  She did not move.  She was almost as rigidly still as Wilhelm himself.  Her eyes did not leave his face.  One might safely sit in that way by the hour and gaze undetected at Wilhelm.  He rarely looked up except when he was addressed.

After standing thus a few moments John turned away, bitter and sick at heart.  What had he been about, that he had not seen this?  He, the loving comrade brother, to be slower of sight than the hard, grasping parent!

“I will ask mother,” he thought.  “I can’t ask Carlen now!  It is too late.”

He found his mother in the kitchen, busy getting the bountiful supper which was a daily ordinance in the Weitbreck religion.  To John’s sharpened perceptions the fact that Carlen was not as usual helping in this labor loomed up into significance.

“Why does not Carlen help you, muetter?” he said hastily.  “What is she doing there, idling with Wilhelm in the stoop?”

Frau Weitbreck smiled.  “It is not alvays to vork, ven one is young,” she said.  “I haf not forget!” And she nodded her head meaningly.