STEIN.

You want—­

FORESTER (turns around at the door).

My sight—­and then—­[Points upward to heaven.]—­to meet my child.

[Exit.  Short pause, during which the others look after him with surprise and emotion.]

STEIN (seized with a sudden apprehension).

If the other barrel is still loaded—­quick—­after him—­

[Outside the door a shot is heard.]

Too late!  I suspected it!

ANDREW, WILLIAM (rushing out).

Father!

ROBERT (in the open door, rooted to the spot through horror and pain at what he sees).

He has his right!

STEIN (also at the door).

A second time his own judge!

PASTOR (stepping to the others).

May God do unto him according to his faith.

[Exeunt.]

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 7:  Translation of the King James version.]

BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH (1856)

By OTTO LUDWIG

TRANSLATED AND CONDENSED BY MURIEL ALMON

The little garden lies between the dwelling-house and the slate shed; whoever goes from one to the other must pass it.  As you go from the house to the shed it is on your left; on the right there is a yard with a woodshed and a stable, separated from the neighboring house by a trellis-fence.  Every morning the house opens twelve green shutters onto one of the busiest streets of the town, the shed opens a large gray door on a back street; the roses on the bushes that have been trained to grow like trees in the little garden can look out into the lane which connects its two larger sisters.  On the other side of the lane stands a tall house which, in elegant seclusion, does not deign to bestow a glance on the smaller one.  Its eyes are open only to the doings of the main street; if you look nearer at its closed eyes facing the narrow street, you soon see the reason for its eternal sleep—­they are only a sham, painted on the outer wall.

Not all sides of the house that belongs to the little garden look as decorative as the one on the main street.  There, a pale rose-colored tint contrasts not too sharply with the green window-shutters and the blue slate roof.  The weather side of the house, on the narrow street, looks as if it were clad in an armor of slate from top to toe; the other gable-end joins directly on to the row of houses of which it is the beginning or the end; at the back, however, it is an example of the proverb that everything has its weak point.  There, an upstairs piazza has been built onto the house, not unlike half a crown of thorns.  Supported by roughly-hewn wooden posts it runs along the upper story and expands toward the left into a little room.  There is no direct entrance to it from the upper story of the house.  To reach the “gallery chamber” from there one must leave the house by the back door, walk perhaps six steps along the wall, past the dog-kennel, to the wooden stairs, resembling those of a henhouse, and after climbing these must wander the whole length of the piazza to the left.