The smith asked the poacher’s opinion, and the latter growled: 

“That will, doubtless, be a good plan.”

He said no more, and when Adam held out his hand to the boy, and kissed him on the forehead, and the doctor bade him an affectionate farewell, Marx called himself a Judas, and would gladly have flung the tempting florins to the four winds, but it was too late.

The smith and Lopez heard him call anxiously to Jorg:  “Take good care of the boy!” And when Adam patted him on the shoulder, saying:  “You are a faithful fellow, Marx!” he could have howled like a mastiff and revealed all; but it seemed as if he again felt the rope around his neck, so he kept silence.

CHAPTER X.

The grey dawn was already glimmering, yet neither the expected vehicle nor Jorg had come.  Old Rahel, usually an early riser, was sleeping as soundly as if she had to make up the lost slumber of ten nights; but the smith’s anxiety would no longer allow him to remain in the close room.  Ruth followed him into the open air, and when she timidly touched him—­ for there had always been something unapproachable to her in the silent man’s gigantic figure—­he looked at her from head to foot, with strange, questioning sympathy, and then asked suddenly, with a haste unusual to him.

“Has your father told you about Jesus Christ?”

“Often!” replied Ruth.

“And do you love Him?”

“Dearly.  Father says He loved all children, and called them to Him.”

“Of course, of course!” replied the smith, blushing with shame for his own distrust.

The doctor did not follow the others, and as soon as his wife saw that they were alone, she beckoned to him.

Lopez sat down on the couch beside her, and took her hand.  The slender fingers trembled in his clasp, and when, with loving anxiety, he drew her towards him, he felt the tremor of her delicate limbs, while her eyes expressed bitter suffering and terrible dread.

“Are you afraid?” he asked, tenderly.

Elizabeth shuddered, threw her arms passionately around his neck, and nodded assent.

“The wagon will convey us to the Rhine Valley, please God, this very day, and there we shall be safe,” he continued, soothingly.  But she shook her head, her features assuming an expression of indifference and contempt.  Lopez understood how to read their meaning, and asked:  “So it is not the bailiffs you fear; something else is troubling you?”

She nodded again, this time still more eagerly, drew out the crucifix, which she had hitherto kept concealed under her coverlid, showed it to him, then pointed upward towards heaven, lastly to herself and him, and shrugged her shoulders with an air of deep, mournful renunciation.

“You are thinking of the other world,” said Lopez; then, fixing his eyes on the ground, he continued, in a lower tone:  “I know you are tortured by the fear of not meeting me there.”