“Look at it carefully,” continued the clerk.  Frederick took it in his hand, looked at the top, the bottom, turned it over.  “One axe looks like another,” he then said, and laid it unconcernedly on the table.  A blood-stain was visible; he seemed to shudder, but he repeated once more with decision:  “I do not know it.”  The clerk of the court sighed with displeasure.  He himself knew of nothing more, and had only sought to bring about a possible disclosure through surprise.  There was nothing left to do but to close the hearing.

To those who are perhaps interested in the outcome of this affair, I must say that the story was never cleared up, although much effort was made to throw light upon it and several other judicial examinations followed.  The sensation which the incident had caused and the more stringent measures adopted in consequence of it, seemed to have broken the courage of the “Blue Smocks”; from now on it looked as though they had entirely disappeared, and although many a wood-thief was caught after that, they never found cause to connect him with the notorious band.  Twenty years afterwards the axe lay as a useless corpus delicti in the archives of the court, where it is probably resting yet with its rust spots.  In a made-up story it would be wrong thus to disappoint the curiosity of the reader, but all this actually happened; I can add or detract nothing.  The next Sunday Frederick rose very early to go to confession.  It was the day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin and the parish priests were in the confessionals before dawn.  He dressed in the dark, and as quietly as possible left the narrow closet which had been consigned to him in Simon’s house.  His prayer-book, he thought, would be lying on the mantelpiece in the kitchen, and he hoped to find it with the help of the faint moonlight.  It was not there.  He glanced searchingly around, and started; at the bedroom door stood Simon, half-dressed; his rough figure, his uncombed, tangled hair, and the paleness of his face in the moonlight, gave him a horribly changed appearance.  “Can he possibly be walking in his sleep?” thought Frederick, and kept quite still.  “Frederick, where are you going?” whispered the old man.

“Uncle, is that you?  I am on my way to confession.”

“That’s what I thought; go, in the name of God, but confess like a good Christian.”

“That I will,” said Frederick.

Think of the Ten Commandments:  ’Thou shalt not bear witness against thy neighbor.’”

“Not false witness!”

“No, none at all; you have been badly taught; he who accuses another in his confession is unworthy to receive the Sacrament.”

Both were silent.  “Uncle, what makes you think of this?” Frederick finally asked.  “Your conscience is not clear; you have lied to me.”

“I?  How?”

“Where is your axe?”

“My axe?  On the barn-floor.”

“Did you make a new handle for it?  Where is the old one?”