After Katy had cleaned the Hartman attic, she cleaned one by one the Hartman bedrooms. Cupboards and closets were emptied of their contents; clothes, blankets, great, thick comforts were carried to the yard and there were beaten and aired and restored to their places. Carpets were taken up to be put through the same process and then were nailed down once more to the floor, with mighty stretching of arms and pulling of fingers. Floors were scrubbed, paint was wiped, windows were polished; even the outside of the house was washed, the walls being approached by a leaning down from the upper windows, long-handled brush well in hand, and a stretching up from the lower windows. Any well-trained Pennsylvania German housewife is amply able to superintend the putting in order of an operating-room in a hospital.

Mrs. Hartman superintended the cleaning, though she was able to take no part. She lay day after day on the old settle in the kitchen and was helped night after night to her bed. She did not like to be helped; if she could make the journey herself while Katy was for a moment busy elsewhere, or when Katy had run down to sit for a few minutes with her Aunt Sally, she was well pleased. As the hoard in Katy's bank grew, Katy's heart became lighter, her tongue moved with some of its old gayety. But Cassie made no answer; she said nothing, indeed, from day's beginning to day's end, except to give Katy directions about her work. Dr. Benner came occasionally to see her, rather as one who watches the progress of an incurable disease than as one who hopes to stay its course. The Lutheran preacher visited her and was received with all appropriate ceremony. Then, according to the old German custom, all work ceased and the family waited upon its guest. In nothing outside her house was Cassie interested. It seemed that for Cassie the springs of life had at last run dry.

When her day's work was done, Katy went to her room and read half the night away. David had brought home the sets of standard works in beautiful bindings which he had bought from agents who visited the college; and now into the stories of Scott and Dickens and Thackeray, stored by Cassie's command in David's cupboard, Katy plunged as a diver plunges into a stream. The books had not been packed away in any order of author or subject; upon them Katy seized as they came to hand. When she could not understand what she read—and there were many poems and essays at which Katy blinked without comprehension—she cried, thinking with bitter regret and heartache that now she might have been in school.

"And I am a servant girl!" sighed Katy. "It is no shame to be a servant girl, but it is a black shame for me!"

Daily she made mental reckoning of the silver dollars and half-dollars accumulating in the putlock hole.

"But there are the two hundred dollars!" she cried. "What shall I say to them about the two hundred dollars! Perhaps when I have paid the squire his fifty dollars, I could tell him that the two hundred dollars was gone and he could get uncle to give me some of my money. Perhaps I can sing again!" The pictures of foreign places in a beautiful book of David's made her heart throb. "Once I thought I could see all such places!"

Then Katy hid her face in her hands and David's beautiful book slid from her lap to the floor.

At Christmas time David Hartman came home. He had attained his full height; his gray eyes looked clearly into the eyes of those who spoke to him. He stood at the head of his class; he had gained confidence in himself. He had asked his mother for a larger allowance and had received it promptly. It amused him to flaunt his money in the eyes of the college, to spend large sums as though they were nothing. He brought his mother handsome presents, and his mother had handsome presents for him. It seemed as though he and she finally understood each other. Of resting his head on any one's shoulder, David thought no more; into his throat came no choking sensations as of old. At Millerstown's pronunciations and Millerstown's customs David laughed. When it was necessary for Katy to be with him, she recounted to him the Millerstown news and David listened politely. Presently it seemed to Katy that he was laughing at her; then she said no more. It was not necessary for them to have much speech together; Katy went down to her Aunt Sally's to sleep while David was at home, leaving the Hartman house soon after supper. During the day she did not see him except in his mother's presence.

"I have read some of your books," she told him one afternoon when she sat at the window sewing and he sat on the opposite side of the kitchen with a book, and Cassie lay asleep on the settle between them.

"That is right," said David. "I hope you have enjoyed them."

"I did." Katy laid down her sewing. If she could talk about these books with David! "I read first of all Wanity—" oh, terrible slip of a tongue which knew better! "I mean Vanity Fair!"

A flash came into David's eyes, a flash of bitter reminiscence. To Katy it was a flash of amusement.

"Vanity Fair is a fine book," said David. But David's tongue betrayed him again. David, too, said "Wanity." To Katy the tone was mocking.

Katy said no more. Katy went to visit her Aunt Sally even in the afternoons.

"'I am brutish as the ox and the ass,'" quoted Katy.

When the preacher came to see David she could not slip away, though she tried hard. She had to listen to the two discussing David's work. She was even unfamiliar with the names of some of his studies.

David, to the awe and envy of his college mates, had for some time kept a riding-horse. He rode while he was at home on a young horse of the Weygandts' which Jimmie had trained to the saddle. Millerstown watched him with admiration as he galloped along the village streets in curious riding-clothes; the squire shook his head over him. The squire was Cassie's adviser; he knew the extent of the fortune which David was to inherit; he was well acquainted also with the curious mental inheritance which was David's. He could not get on with David, who was as taciturn as his parents.

David rode about to all his mother's farms and orchards and to the fine woodland on the mountain with its precious soil. Many persons were dependent upon the Hartman estate for their livelihood, more would be dependent when the mines could be opened again. There came into David's mind as he rode homeward a dim vision like the vision his father had seen of a happy community of which he should be the head. But David did not try to make his vision clear to himself. He was passing the poorhouse and his thoughts turned to the Koehler family. Alvin he hated; with Alvin he still owed the settlement of a debt, even though Katy Gaumer seemed to think of him no more. William Koehler himself had been punished; he was praying and gibbering somewhere behind the walls of the poorhouse. David thought of his father, and the rage of his youth against the Koehlers swelled his heart again almost to bursting. Without exception he hated Millerstown.

Nevertheless, David went once or twice to see the little Improved New Mennonite, a proceeding which amazed and disgusted Millerstown. Susannah Kuhns expressed to Katy Millerstown's opinion that that connection would "give a match"; then she recounted to Katy at great length the ambitious plans of Alvin and his bride.

When David returned to school, Katy went back to her room in the Hartman house. Christmas had been dreary with its memories and its contrasts with the past; Katy was not sorry to have again constant occupation for her mind and her hands. She straightened out the slight disorder caused by the presence of David; she got the meals as usual; she exchanged a few words with the invalid; and when the quiet of night had settled upon the house, she lit the lamp in her room and opened the beautiful illustrated book at the page upon which she had closed it. But Katy did not proceed with the account of the Coliseum. Katy closed the book, and drawing her scarlet shawl a little closer about her shoulders, laid her cheek down on the bureau. Katy was again obsessed. She saw David's clear gray eyes, looking at her in astonishment as she applied for a servant's place in his mother's house. She heard his speech, so unlike her own; he seemed to stand close beside her. She saw again that flicker of amusement in his eyes, heard again that unconscious mockery. David was a part of the great world into which she had expected to fare forth. David was English. David was as far above her as the stars.

"He wasn't in the beginning!" cried Katy. "I have made myself what I am. I am mean and low and ignorant."

Then Katy rose from her chair and clasped her hands across her heart.

"Am I to have this again?" cried Katy. "Alvin is only just out of my mind. What am I to do? What am I to do? What am I made of? I am worse than Mary Wolle and Sally Hersh. If I cannot have one in my mind to worry me, then I must have another. Am I to have no peace in this world?"

Katy looked about the little room with its narrow bed, its little bureau, its single chair, its cupboard crowded with books. Katy remembered that this was David's room, that here he slept, had slept only last night. Katy knelt down by the bed and began to pray, not for David, but for herself.

By morning Katy had made a firm resolution.

"I will think only of this money. I have twenty-four dollars saved. In four months I will be free of my debt."

January, February, and March saw poor Cassie growing weaker and more silent, saw Katy's hoard swelling.

"It is thirty dollars!" said she. "Now it is thirty-six dollars!" "Now it is forty-two dollars!" Frequently Katy thanked God. A little lighter grew her heart.

One evening in March a sudden uneasiness overwhelmed her.

"I will go down and count it," said she. "Perhaps I should put it in a safer place. But no one knows that the hole is there but a few people, and no one could get a hand into the bottom but me."

It was not Saturday; Katy had no sum to add to the deposit; but she wrapped her shawl about her and went down to the Gaumer house. There, laughing at herself for her uneasiness, she rolled back her sleeve and thrust her arm deep into her hiding-place. Then she stood perfectly still and with a moan began to feel about. The little pit had no outlet; it was still safe and dry, a capital hiding-place, provided one kept its existence to one's self, but it was empty.

At first Katy could not believe the evidence of her senses. Frantically she thrust in her hand, reluctantly she drew it out and felt of it with the other hand and even laid it along her cheek. It was not until she had repeated this process several times that she was able to appreciate the truth. The putlock hole was empty, her hard-earned hoard was gone, freedom from debt cruelly postponed.

Then Katy, who had so bravely hidden her various troubles from Millerstown and from her kin, began to cry like a crazy person. She struck at the hard stone wall until her hands bled; she ran, crying and sobbing, to her Uncle Edwin's door, and burst it open, frightening him and Aunt Sally nearly out of their wits as they sat by the kitchen table.

"My money is gone!" she cried, seizing Uncle Edwin by the arm. "I tell you my money is gone! It is stolen! It is not there! Somebody has run away with it!"

"Your money!" gasped Uncle Edwin, struggling to his feet. "What money? Where had you money, Katy? Who stole it? In Heaven's name, Katy, what is wrong?"

Katy sank down on the old settle and stared at them wildly.

"I had money in the hole in the wall."

"What hole in the wall, Katy?"

"Right here in this wall, where Bevy put cakes for me when I was little and lived with my gran'pop. I had all my money that I ever earned there—it was forty-two dollars. Cassie would tell you that she gave me forty-two dollars already, or you could count it up by weeks. On Saturday evening it was there, and now it is gone. Oh, what shall I do, what shall I do?"

Katy began to wring her hands; Aunt Sally besought her, weeping, to lie down; Uncle Edwin reached to the high mantel-shelf where he had laid his gun out of little Adam's reach.

"There is no one there now!" cried Katy. "It is no use to go now! I can reach to the bottom of the hole and there is not a penny there." She began to repeat what she had said. "My money is gone! My money is gone!" William Koehler when he was accused of stealing the communion service had behaved no more crazily.

"I will go for the squire," said Uncle Edwin, moving toward the door, gun in hand. "That is the first thing to do."

Then Uncle Edwin paused. From without rose a fearful uproar. There were loud cries in a man's voice, there were shrill reproaches and commands in a woman's. There were even squeals. Aunt Sally added her screams to those which proceeded from without. Uncle Edwin advanced boldly, his empty gun lifted to his shoulder.

"It is Bevy!" cried Aunt Sally. "Some one has Bevy!"

Bravely Aunt Sally followed Uncle Edwin; weeping Katy followed Aunt Sally. At the corner of the house they paused in unspeakable amazement.

The squire had opened his door; from it a broad shaft of light shot out across the lawn which separated the two houses. It illuminated brightly the opening of the putlock hole and its vicinity. There an extraordinary tableau presented itself to the eyes of Katy Gaumer and her kin. The center of the stage was occupied by Bevy and a struggling man. Over his head Bevy had thrown her gingham apron; she twisted it now tightly like a tourniquet and screamed for help.

"Thief! Thief!" shouted Bevy.

"My ear! My ear!" cried a muffled voice from beneath the apron, a voice recognized immediately by one at least of the astonished spectators.

"I do not care for your ear," screamed Bevy. "Your ear is nothing to me. You were stealing! What is it that you have stolen?"

Wildly Alvin tried to free himself; frantically Bevy clung to him. Bevy now found an ally in Uncle Edwin, who seized the prisoner in a firm grasp.

"Whoa, there!" cried Uncle Edwin. "I have him, Bevy. I have him by the arm. You can let him go."

There was the sound of approaching footsteps, of opening doors, there were questions and outcries.

"What is it?"

"I heard some one yelling."

"Shall I bring a gun?"

"It was a pig that squealed!"

"What is wrong with everybody?"

The squire came flying across the lawn. He saw as he opened the door the struggling Alvin and the excited Bevy and Edwin Gaumer armed here on this peaceful night with a gun. He saw also his grandniece with her flaming cheeks, her swollen eyes, her disheveled hair. The squire did not know what had happened, but he closed his door behind him so that the scene should be no longer illuminated.

"Nothing is wrong," he declared sternly. "Nobody shall bring a gun."

With a gesture he ordered his kinsfolk and Bevy and her prey into his office; with an arm thrown across her shoulders he protected his niece from further observation. Then, cruelly, upon Millerstown he shut his office door. For a while Millerstown hung about; then having recognized no one but the squire, and neither able to see nor to hear further, departed for their several homes.

Inside the squire locked the door and motioned his excited guests to seats. If Katy had had her way she would have died on the spot, she would have sunk into the earth and would have been swallowed up. But with the squire's arm about her she could do nothing but proceed to his office with the rest.

The squire looked from one to the other, from Edwin with his gun to Aunt Sally with her round and staring eyes; from Bevy to Alvin, who smoothed his hair and laid a protecting hand over his suffering ear.

"What on earth is the matter with you people?" he demanded. "Has war broken out in Millerstown?"

At once began an indescribable clamor.

"I was going over to Sally a little—" this was Bevy. "I saw him." Bevy indicated her prisoner with a contemptuous gesture. "He was digging in the hole, and I—"

"You didn't!" contradicted Alvin. "You didn't!"

"What hole?" asked the squire.

"Do you dare to say I didn't take you by the ear?" cried Bevy with threatening fingers lifted toward that aching member.

"The hole where Katy had her money," explained Edwin.

"It was stolen," cried Aunt Sally.

"I didn't!" protested Alvin again, his face green with fright. He blamed his own greediness for the discovery. On Sunday evening he had taken all Katy's hoard; why had he been so mad as to return to seek more?

"A mule is a mule," proclaimed Bevy Schnepp. "A Koehler is a Koehler. They steal; you cannot better them by education; they are all the time the same, they—"

"Be still, Bevy!" commanded the squire.

But Bevy would not be still. She gave another scream and began to dance up and down in her grasshopper-like fashion.

"Look at him, once! He says he didn't, does he? Look once what he has in his hand!"

At once all eyes turned with closer scrutiny upon Alvin. He still held in his hand the implement with which he had coaxed Katy's dollars and half-dollars from the depths of the putlock hole. It was only a bit of twisted wire, but it had done its work well.

"Like father, like son!" screamed Bevy again. "What did I say? Where did he get the money to get educated? Where—"

"Bevy, be still!" commanded the squire in a sterner tone. "Katy, did you keep your money in the putlock hole?"

"Yes," answered Katy in a low voice. Here, face to face with Alvin, she remembered all the past, her long vigils on the porch when she watched for him, his kiss in the shadow, his later, different kisses, his ingratitude, her shame. Katy's head sank lower and lower on her breast.

"Why did you select such a place for a bank, Katy?"

"I used to keep things there when I was a little girl. Into the deep part nobody could put a hand but me. That is why I thought it was safe."

The squire looked more and more angry. His voice sank deeper and deeper in his throat.

"You didn't count on bent wire, did you? How much money did you have there, Katy?"

Katy answered so faintly that the squire could not hear.

"She said forty-two dollars," answered Uncle Edwin for her. Uncle Edwin had now stationed himself behind Alvin; at Alvin's slightest motion he put forth a hand to seize him. The Gaumers had not been able to defend their kinswoman from her own incomprehensible foolishness, but from such bold assault from without they were amply able to protect her.

"Is this so, Katy?" asked the squire.

Katy's head sank on her breast. "Yes, sir."

"Alvin, look at me!"

Alvin lifted his head slowly. He saw jail yawning before him. If they searched his house, they could still find a few of Katy's silver coins. Then under the pressure of fear—Alvin as yet felt no shame—his mind worked to some purpose. There was one possible defense to make; this he offered.

"Katy often gave me money and put it in that place for me," he said, boldly. "There I got it many times. Ain't—" Alvin's normal school training suddenly forsook him—"ain't it so, Katy?"

"You must be wandering in your mind, Alvin," said the squire, scornfully.

"There he will not wander far," cried Bevy with a shrill laugh.

Alvin rose from his chair and approached Katy. Color returned to his cheek, his eyes brightened.

"Ain't it so, Katy, that you often put money in that hole for me?"

"Humbug!" cried the squire.

But Alvin persisted. He went nearer to Katy, and with single united motion Katy's relatives sprang toward him. Aunt Sally put her arm round her niece, Bevy made a threatening motion toward Alvin's ear, Uncle Edwin seized him by the arm. But Alvin grew ever bolder. Despite the threats of Bevy and the hand of Edwin, he took another step toward Katy.

"Say you gave money to me often, Katy?"

Katy answered in a low voice. She was too confused to think of any expedient; she answered with the truth. Perhaps that would put an end to this intolerable scene. It would be bad enough to have them know, but it was worse to stand here in misery with them all staring at her.

"Yes," she answered Alvin, "I did give you sometimes money."

"What!" cried the squire.

Uncle Edwin and Bevy each gave a kind of groan.

Katy lifted her head.

"I said 'yes.'"

Now Bevy began to cry aloud.

"Next time I will not take you to the squire, you lump! Next time I will twist your ear quite off. I will settle you right!"

"Bevy, you had better go," suggested the squire; and meekly Bevy departed.

"Edwin, suppose you and Sally leave these young people here."

Together Uncle Edwin and Aunt Sally approached the door. Aunt Sally was wiping her eyes on her apron; Uncle Edwin walked with bent head as though the name of Gaumer was disgraced forever. Them the squire followed to the door, and outside, wishing to be certain that no curious Millerstonians lingered. With his hand on the outer knob, he closed the door while he promised to see Edwin later in the evening. Edwin stopped to express his horror at this strange situation; their conversation consumed a few seconds at least.

Behind the closed door Alvin approached Katy as she stood by the squire's desk, numb, smitten, unable to raise her head.

"Katy," said he, softly, "I do not care if you have worked out, Katy. That is less than nothing to me. I am never going to marry that other one. She is no good. I will marry you, Katy. I did not know"—Alvin's voice shook—"I did not know till this time how I love you, Katy."

At this point Alvin laid his hand upon Katy's arm and applied a tender pressure.

Then, suddenly, furiously, Alvin was flung aside, back against the sharp point of the squire's desk. Young women do not keep house in the Pennsylvania German fashion, with sweeping and scrubbing and beating of carpets, without developing considerable muscular power. Terrified, bruised by contact with the sharp corner of the desk, Alvin lifted hands to defend himself from Katy, whose worth he had learned so suddenly to value.

Katy, however, stayed to punish him no further. Instead, she rushed across the room and threw herself into the arms of the squire. She spoke shrilly, she sobbed and cried.

"Send him away and let me talk to you alone! I must talk to you! Oh, please send him away!"

Alvin needed no orders. He read in the squire's expression permission to depart, and he slipped sidewise out the door, making himself as small as possible for the passage.

When the door had closed behind him, the squire put Katy into a corner of the sofa in his back office and sat down beside her.

"Now, Katy, begin."

With tears and hysterical laughter, Katy began her story.

"I thought I was so fine and powerful when I helped him. I thought I was rich with my two hundred dollars and that I could do anything. I thought he had no chance and I would help him. I pitied him because he had a bad name from his father. The worst thing was I liked him. Oh, dear! Oh, dear!"

The squire's frown grew blacker and blacker.

"He took the money and never paid any of it back, and then stole this from you yet! Money you were saving to pay me! Money you had borrowed for him! Oh, Katy, Katy!" Then, suddenly, the squire laughed. "Katy, dear, I bought a gold brick like this once. It wasn't just like this, but it cost me much more. We've got to learn, all of us! Oh, you poor soul! And my gold brick was not bought for the sake of charity, Katy!" The squire laughed and laughed and Katy cried and cried as her head rested upon the broad shoulder which had been offered to her earlier. "Now, Katy, it is late and I will take you home."

The squire put Katy's scarlet shawl about her and took her by the arm, and together they went up the misty street. At the Hartmans' gate the squire left his companion. Then, with a quicker stride he sought the house of Alvin Koehler.