“I wonder what that is!” said a woman’s voice inside.  “The door is rattling, and there’s no wind blowing!”

He knocked louder.  “For God’s sake, let in a half-frozen man, who comes out of Turkish slavery!”

There was whispering in the kitchen.  “Go to the inn,” answered another voice, “the fifth house from here!”

“In the name of our merciful God, let me in!  I have no money.”

After some delay the door opened.  A man came out with a lighted lamp.  “Come right in,” he then said; “you won’t cut our heads off.”  In the kitchen there were, besides the man, a middle-aged woman, an old mother, and five children.  All crowded around the newcomer and scrutinized him with timid curiosity.  A wretched figure!  Wry-necked, with his back bent, his whole body broken and powerless; long hair, white as snow, fell about his face, which bore the distorted expression of long suffering.  The woman went silently to the hearth and added some fresh fagots.  “A bed we cannot give you,” she said, “but I will make a good litter of straw here; you’ll have to make the best of that.”

“God reward you!” answered the stranger; “indeed I am used to worse than that.”

The man who had returned home was recognized as John Nobody, and he himself avowed that it was he who had once fled with Frederick Mergel.  The next day the village was full of the adventures of the man who had so long been forgotten.  Everybody wanted to see the man from Turkey, and they were almost surprised that he should still look like other people.  The young folks, to be sure, did not remember him, but the old could still recognize his features perfectly, wretchedly disfigured though he was.

“John, John, how gray you’ve grown!” said an old woman; “and where did you get your wry neck?”

“From carrying wood and water in slavery,” he replied.  “And what has become of Mergel?  You ran away together, didn’t you?”

“Yes, indeed; but I do not know where he is; we got separated.  If you think of him, pray for him,” he added; “he probably needs it.”

They asked him why Frederick had disappeared, inasmuch as he had not murdered the Jew.  “Not killed him!” said John, and listened intently when they told him what the lord of the estate had purposely spread abroad in order to erase the spot from Mergel’s name.  “So all was in vain,” he said musing, “all in vain—­so much suffering!”

He sighed deeply and asked, on his part, about many things.  He was told that Simon had been dead a long while, but had first fallen into complete poverty through lawsuits and bad debtors whom he could not sue because, it was said, the business relations between them had been questionable.  Finally he had been reduced to begging and had died on the straw in a strange barn.  Margaret had lived longer, but in absolute mental torpor.  The people in the village had soon grown tired of helping her, because she let everything that they gave her go to ruin; for it is,