“You’ll find it at daylight in the woodshed.”

“Go,” he continued scornfully.  “I thought you were a man; but you are like an old woman who thinks the house must be on fire as soon as she sees smoke rising from her pot.  See,” he went on, “if I know anything more about this story than that doorpost there, may I never hope for salvation.  I was at home long before,” he added.  Frederick stood still, oppressed and doubtful.  He would have given much to be able to see his uncle’s face.  But while they were whispering, the sky had clouded over.

“I am very guilty,” sighed Frederick, “because I sent him the wrong way; although—­but still, I never thought it would come to this, no, certainly not!  Uncle, I have you to thank for a troubled conscience.”

“Well, go and confess!” whispered Simon in a trembling voice.  “Desecrate the Sacrament by tale-bearing, and set a spy on poor people who will manage to find a way to snatch their bit of bread from between their teeth, even if he is not permitted to talk—­go!” Frederick stood, undecided; he heard a soft noise; the clouds cleared away, the moonlight again fell on the bedroom door; it was closed.  Frederick did not go to confession that morning.

The impression which this incident had made on Frederick wore off only too soon.  Who doubts that Simon did everything to lead his adopted son down the same paths that he was following?  And Frederick possessed qualities which made this only too easy:  carelessness, excitability, and, above all, boundless pride, which did not always scorn pretense and ended by doing its utmost to escape possible disgrace, by trying to realize what it first had pretended to possess.  He was not naturally ignoble, but he fell into the habit of preferring inward to outward shame.  One need only say that he habitually made a display while his mother starved.

This unfortunate change in his character was, however, the work of many years, during which it was noticed that Margaret became more and more quiet on the subject of her son, and gradually came to a state of demoralization which once would have been thought impossible.  She became timid, negligent, even slovenly, and many thought her brain had suffered.  Frederick, on the other hand, grew all the more self-assertive; he missed no fair or wedding, and since his irritable sense of honor would not permit him to overlook the secret disapprobation of many, he was, so to speak, up in arms, not so much to defy public opinion as to direct it into the channel which pleased him.  Externally he was neat, sober, apparently affable, but crafty, boastful, and often coarse—­a man in whom no one could take delight, least of all his mother, and who, nevertheless, through his audacity, which every one feared, and through his cunning, which they dreaded even more, had attained a certain preeminence in the village.  The preeminence came to be acknowledged more and more as people became conscious of the fact that they neither knew him nor could guess of what he might be capable.  Only one young fellow in the village, Will Huelsmeyer, who realized his own strength and good circumstances, dared to defy him.  Since he was also readier with his tongue than Frederick, and could always make a pointed joke, he was the only one whom Frederick did not like to meet.