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And then, of a sudden, he found himself still seated at the table, the brown parchment still spread out before him, and the faint light of early morning breaking into the room. The window was wide open, as he had left it, and he was chilled to the marrow; he had a shocking cold in the head; there were rheumatic twinges in all his joints as he arose. What with the physical misery arising from these causes, and the moral misery arising from his sense of committed sin, he was in about as desperately bad a humor with himself as a man could be. He was in no mood to make another effort to read the difficult German of the recipe, the cause of all his troubles. The sight of it pained him, and he thrust it hurriedly into an old desk in which were stored (and these also were a source of pain to him) several generations of uncollected bills–practical proofs that the adage in regard to the impossibility of simultaneously possessing cakes and pennies does not always hold good.

He locked the desk and put the key in his pocket; and then returned the key to the lock and left it there, as the thought occurred to him that the locking of this desk, that never in all the years that he had owned it had been locked before, might arouse suspicion. It seemed most natural to Gottlieb that his actions should be regarded with suspicion; he had a feeling that already his crime must be known to half the world.

And before night it certainly is true that the one person most deeply interested in the discovery and punishment of Gottlieb’s crime–that is to say, Hans Kuhn–did know all about it; which fact would seem surprising, considering how skilfully Gottlieb had gone about his work, were it not remembered that his unwitting accessory had been the little round Brunswicker widow, and were it not known that little round widows–Brunswick born or born elsewhere–as a class are incapable of keeping a secret.

This excellent woman, to do her justice, had followed Gottlieb’s orders to the letter. He had warned her not to tell the loose apprentice that his chest had been searched; and, so far as that apprentice was concerned, wild horses might have been employed to drag that little round widow to pieces–at least she might have permitted the wild horses to be hitched up to her–before ever an indiscreet word would have passed her lips. But when Hans Kuhn, for whom she entertained a high respect, and for whom she had also that warmly friendly feeling which trig middle-aged widows not seldom manifest towards good-looking young men, came to her in a fine state of wrath, and told her that his chest had been ransacked (he did not tell her of his loss, for he had not himself observed it), she did not consider that she violated any confidence in telling him everything that had occurred. It was all a mistake, she said; the Herr Brekel had gone into the wrong room; she must set the matter right at once; that bad young man might be a thief, after all. Hans felt a cold thrill run through him at the widow’s words. But he controlled himself so well that she did not suspect his inward perturbation; and she accepted in as good faith his offer to inform the Herr Brekel of his error as she did, a day later, his assurance that the matter had been satisfactorily adjusted, and that the innocence of the apprentice had been proved.

And then Hans returned to his violated chest, and found that the dread which had assailed his soul was founded in substantial truth–the recipe was gone! In itself the loss of the recipe was no very great matter, for he knew it by heart; but that Gottlieb–who had also a cellar full of rich old honey-cake–should have gained possession of it was a desperate matter indeed. Here instantly was an end to the hope of successful rivalry that Hans had cherished; and with the wreck of his luck in trade, as it seemed to him in the first shock of his misfortune, away in fragments to the four winds of heaven was scattered every vestige of probability that he would have luck in love. Being so suddenly confronted with a compound catastrophe so overwhelming, even a bolder baker than Hans Kuhn very well might have been for a time aghast.