to a phantom world.  But it was also true that never since the first day of his mysterious coming had Wilhelm been long absent from Carlen’s thoughts; and she did indeed find him—­as her father’s keen eyes, sharpened by greed, had observed—­good to look upon.  That most insidious of love’s allies, pity, had stormed the fortress of Carlen’s heart, and carried it by a single charge.  What could a girl give, do, or be, that would be too much for one so stricken, so lonely as was Wilhelm!  The melancholy beauty of his face, his lithe figure, his great strength, all combined to heighten this impression, and to fan the flames of the passion in Carlen’s virgin soul.  It was indeed, as John had sorrowfully said to himself, “too late” to speak to Carlen.

As John stood now at the pasture bars, waiting for the herd of cows, slow winding up the slope from the brook, he saw Wilhelm on the rocks below.  He had thrown himself down on his back, and lay there with his arms crossed on his breast.  Presently he clasped both hands over his eyes as if to shut out a sight that he could no longer bear.  Something akin to pity stirred even in John’s angry heart as he watched him.

“What can it be,” he said, “that makes him hate even the sky?  It may be it is a sweetheart he has lost, and he is one of that strange kind of men who can love but once; and it is loving the dead that makes him so like one dead himself.  Poor Carlen!  I think myself he never so much as sees her.”

A strange reverie, surely, for the brother who had so few short moments ago been angrily reproaching his sister for the disgrace and shame of caring for this tramp.  But the pity was short-lived in John’s bosom.  His inborn distrust and antagonism to the man were too strong for any gentler sentiment toward him to live long by their side.  And when the family gathered at the supper-table he fixed upon Wilhelm so suspicious and hostile a gaze that even Wilhelm’s absent mind perceived it, and he in turn looked inquiringly at John, a sudden bewilderment apparent in his manner.  It disappeared, however, almost immediately, dying away in his usual melancholy absorption.  It had produced scarce a ripple on the monotonous surface of his habitual gloom.  But Carlen had perceived all, both the look on John’s face and the bewilderment on Wilhelm’s; and it roused in her a resentment so fierce toward John, she could not forbear showing it.  “How cruel!” she thought.  “As if the poor fellow had not all he could bear already without being treated unkindly by us!” And she redoubled her efforts to win Wilhelm’s attention and divert his thoughts, all in vain; kindness and unkindness glanced off alike, powerless, from the veil in which he was wrapped.