This autumn it would be eighteen years since John had gone away, and every year John Michael Winkler was reported in the paper as missing, which would be done until his fiftieth year—­he was now in his thirty-sixth.  The story circulated in the village that John had gone among the gipsies.  Once, indeed, his mother had mistaken a young gipsy for him; he was a man who bore a striking resemblance to her missing son, in that he was small of stature and had the same dark complexion; and he had seemed rather pleased at being taken for John.  But the mother had put him to the proof, for she still had John’s hymn-book and his confirmation verse; and, inasmuch as the stranger did not know this verse and could not tell who were his sponsors, or what had happened to him on the day when Brosi’s Severin arrived with his English wife, and later on when the new well was dug at the town-hall—­inasmuch as he did not satisfy these and other proofs, he could not be the right man.  And yet Marianne used to give the gipsy a lodging whenever he came to the village, and the children in the streets used to cry “John!” after him.

John was advertised as being liable to military duty and as a deserter; and although his mother declared that he would have slipped through under the measuring-stick as “too short,” she knew that he would not escape punishment if he returned, and inferred that this was the reason why he did not return.  And it was very strange to hear her praying, almost in the same breath, for the welfare of her son and the death of the reigning prince; for she had been told that when the sovereign died, his successor would proclaim a general amnesty for all past offenses.

Every year Marianne used to ask the schoolmaster to give her the page in the newspaper in which her John was advertised for, and she always put it with his hymn-book.  But this year it was a good thing that Marianne could not read, so that the schoolmaster could send her another page in place of the one she wanted.  For a strange rumor was going through the whole village; whenever two people stood together talking, they would be saying: 

“Black Marianne must not be told anything about it.  It would kill her—­it would drive her crazy.”

For a report, coming from the Ambassador in Paris, had passed through a number of higher and lower officers, until it reached the Village Council; it stated that, according to a communication received from Algiers, John Winkler of Haldenbrunn had perished in that colony during an outpost skirmish.  There was much talk in the village of the singular fact that so many in high departments should have concerned themselves so much about the dead John.  But this stream of well-confirmed information was arrested before it had reached the end of its course.

At a meeting of the Village, Council it was determined that nothing at all should be said to Black Marianne about it.  It would be wrong, they said, to embitter the last few years of her life by taking her one comfort away from her.