What a wretched existence was hers--worse than a dog's!
"Why have you gone on staying here when they treat you thus?" he asked. "There are other places in the world."
She gazed at him in astonishment, as if she did not grasp his meaning.
"You might at least have left the island, and betaken yourself somewhere where your life would not always be in danger."
"Was I to leave _him_ to starve?" she asked; and then, growing suddenly red, she added, correcting herself shyly, "I mean the _gnäd'ger Herr_."
He nodded to reassure her, for she looked as if she expected to be chastised on the spot for her slip of speech, poor miserable creature!
"I don't go down there oftener than I can help. Generally I go over the Cats' Bridge by night to Bockeldorf, three miles away. There, at Bockeldorf, I could get flour and meat, and everything else that _he_--the _gnädiger Herr_--wanted, if I paid double the price for it, and be back by the morning. But sometimes it's impossible to get there--in a snow-storm, for instance, or a flood. So when the weather was very bad I was obliged to go down to the village, and had to pay still more money there, and even then perhaps get nothing but blows. So"--she laughed a wild, almost cunning laugh--"I just took what came handy."
She gaily nodded assent, as if the achievement was deserving of special praise.
She was so depraved, then, this strange, savage girl, that she was quite incapable of distinguishing the difference between right and wrong!
"And what were you doing in the village yesterday?" he questioned anew.
"Yesterday? Well, you see, _he_ must be buried. It's time, _Herr_, quite time. And I thought to myself, however much I cry, that won't get him under the earth."
"So you cried, did you?" he asked contemptuously.
"And so I took the tub and went down to the pastor's. But the pastor said I mustn't contaminate his house by coming near it, so on I went to landlord Merckel, who is mayor as you know, _Herr_. And there the soldiers saw me----"
"The soldiers who have just come from the war." She paused again.
"And the soldiers cried out 'Down with her--strike her down!' and then the chase began, and my father joined in and called out 'Down with her!' too, but he was only drunk, as he nearly always is.... The stones flew about, and the women and children caught hold of me and held me fast, that they might strike me; but I had the tub and held it with both hands high over their heads, hacking with it right and left like this." She illustrated her story by holding up her rounded muscular arms in the air, and bringing them down again like a pair of clubs.