By and by he said –

»Eleven hundred and six ducats. It is a large sum.«

»Seven,« said Seppi, correcting him.

»Oh, seven, was it? Of course a ducat more or less isn't of consequence, but you said eleven hundred and six, before.«

It would not have become us to say he was mistaken, but we knew he was. Nikolaus said –

»Since your reverence says we said it, we did; but we meant to say seven.«

»Oh, it is no matter, lad, it was merely that I noticed the discrepancy. It is several days, and you cannot be expected to remember precisely. One is apt to be inexact when there is no particular circumstance to impress the count upon the memory.«

»But there was one, Father,« said Seppi, eagerly.

»What was it, my son,« asked Father Adolf, indifferently.

»First, we all counted the piles of coin, each in turn, and all made it the same – eleven hundred and six. But I had slipped one out, for fun, when the count began, and now I slipped it back and said, ›I think there is a mistake – there are eleven hundred and seven; let us count again.‹ We did, and of course I was right. They were astonished; then I told how it came about.«

Father Adolf asked us if this was so, and we said it was.

»That settles it,« he said. »I know the thief, now. Lads, the money was stolen.«

Then he went away, leaving us very much troubled, and wondering what he could mean. In about an hour we found out; for by that time it was all over the village that Father Peter had been arrested for stealing a great sum of money from Father Adolf. Everybody's tongue was loose and going. Many said it was not in Father Peter's character and must be a mistake; but the others shook their heads and said misery and want could drive a suffering man to almost anything. About one detail there were no differences: all agreed that Father Peter's account of how the money came into his hands was just about unbelievable, it had such an impossible look. Our characters began to suffer, now. We were Father Peter's only witnesses; how much did he probably pay us to back up his fantastic tale? People talked that kind of talk to us pretty freely and frankly, and were full of scoffings when we begged them to believe we had really told only the truth. Our parents were harder on us than any one else. Our fathers said we were disgracing our families, and they commanded us to purge ourselves of our lie, and there was no limit to their anger when we continued to say we had spoken true. Our mothers cried over us and begged us to give back our bribe and get back our honest names and save our families from shame, and come out and honorably confess. And at last we were so worried and harassed that we tried to tell the whole thing, Satan and all – but no, it wouldn't come out. We were hoping and longing, all the time, that Satan would come and help us out of our trouble, but there was no sign of him.

Within an hour after Father Adolf's talk with us Father Peter was in prison and the money sealed up and in the hands of the officers of the law. The money was in a bag, and Solomon Isaacs said he had not touched it since he had counted it; his oath was taken that it was the same money, and that the amount was eleven hundred and seven ducats. Father Peter claimed trial by the ecclesiastical court, but Father Adolf didn't want that, and said an ecclesiastical court hadn't jurisdiction over a suspended priest. The Bishop upheld him. That settled it; the case would go to trial in the civil court. The court would not sit for some time to come. Wilhelm Meidling would be Father Peter's lawyer and do the best he could, of course, but he told us privately that a weak case on his side and all the power and prejudice on the other made the outlook bad.

So Marget's new happiness died a quick death. No friends came to condole with her, and none were expected; an unsigned note withdrew her invitation to the party. There would be no scholars to take lessons. How could she support herself? She could remain in the house, for the mortgage was paid off, though the government and not poor Solomon Isaacs had the mortgage-money in its grip for the present.