sweep the last rival out of the way. An officer in the king's service appeared in the village to draw the conscripts for the army, and the young men trembled like penned-up sheep at the entrance of the blood-stained butcher, not knowing who would be seized for the shambles. The officer had apparently been a friend and companion of Schönfeld's in former days, and passed some time at his house. It was perhaps only a coincidence, but it struck the neighbors as very odd at least, that Carl Proch was the first man drawn for the army. He had no money to hire a substitute, and there was no alternative; he must serve his three years. This last blow was too much for his poor mother. Worn down by her constant assiduity in nursing him, and overcome by the sense of utter desolation, she sunk into her grave, and was buried on the very day that Carl, with the other recruits, was marched off.
What new torture the betrothed Katrine felt is not to be told. Three years were to her an eternity; and her imagination called up such visions of danger from wounds, privations, and disease, that she parted from her lover as though it were forever. The miller found that the light and the melody of his house were gone. Katrine was silent and sorrowful; her frame wasted and her step grew feeble. To all his offers of condolence she made no reply, except to remind him how with tears she had besought his interference in Carl's behalf. She would not be comforted. The father little knew the feeling she possessed; he had thought that her attachment to her rustic lover was only a girlish fancy, and that she would speedily forget him; but now her despairing look frightened him. To the neighbors, who looked inquisitively as he sat by the mill-door, smoking, he complained of the quality of his tobacco, vowing that it made his eyes so tender that they watered upon the slightest whiff.
For six months Schönfeld wisely kept away; that period, he thought, would be long enough to efface any recollection of the absent soldier. Then he presented himself, and, in his usual imperious way, offered his hand to Katrine. The miller was inclined to favor his suit. In wealth and position Schönfeld was first in the village; he would be a powerful ally, and a very disagreeable enemy. In fact, Rauchen really feared to refuse the demand; and he plied his daughter with such argument as he could command, hoping to move her to accept the offer. Katrine, however, was convinced of the truth of her former suspicion, that Carl was a victim of Schönfeld's craft; and her rejection of his proposal was pointed with an indignation which she took no pains to conceal. The old scar showed strangely white in his purple face, as he left the mill, vowing vengeance for the affront.
Rauchen and his daughter were now more solitary than ever. The father had forgotten the roaring stories he used to tell to the neighboring peasants, over foaming flagons of ale, at the little inn; he sat at his mill-door and smoked incessantly. Katrine shunned the festivities in which she was once queen, and her manner, though kindly, was silent and reserved; she went to church, it is true, but she wore a look of settled sorrow that awed curiosity and even repelled sympathy. But scandal is a plant that needs no root in the earth; like the houseleek, it can thrive upon air; and those who separate themselves the most entirely from the world are apt, for that very reason, to receive the larger share of its attention. The village girls looked first with pity, then with wonder, and at length with aversion, upon the gentle and unfortunate Katrine. Careless as she was with regard to public opinion, she saw not without pain the altered looks of her old associates, and before long she came to know the cause. A cruel suspicion had been whispered about, touching her in a most tender point. It was not without reason, so the gossip ran, that she had refused so eligible an offer of marriage Schönfeld's. The story reached the ears of Rauchen, at last. With a fierce
