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“Didn’t you drop the rope out of the dormer-window to tie it with?”

“No, your honor.”

“And don’t you know who is your sweetheart?”

Eva began to weep aloud. It was dreadful to deny; and yet she could not confess it. In America such a question would have had no other result than a reprimand from the bench to the counsel putting it. But so defenceless is the condition of parties and witnesses where justice hides in corners, that the judge even went further, and said,–

“It’s no use to deny it: Mat is your sweetheart, and you’re going to get married very soon.”

Eva remembered that four weeks later they intended to ask that same court for permission to get married,–an indispensable formula under the code of that happy country. If she denied it now, she thought they would refuse to give her the “papers” and the “acceptance,” and, besides, it was against her conscience to say “No.” Her heart beat quickly; a certain feeling of pride arose within her; a consciousness of superiority to all the ills that flesh is heir to pervaded her being: she forgot the papers and the judge, and only thought of Mat. The last tear dropped from her lids; her eyes brightened; she arose quickly, looked around as if in triumph, and said, “Yes: I’ll never have any one but him.”

“So Mat put up your May-pole?”

“It may be, but of course I couldn’t be by, and that night I was—-” Here the tears choked her utterance again. It was well for the poor girl that she held her hands before her eyes, and could not see the smiles of the men of justice.

“Confess, now, he put up your May-pole, and nobody else.”

“How can I know?”

By all sorts of cross-questions, and the oily assurance that the punishment would be but slight, the judge at last wormed the confession from her. The minutes were now read to her in fine book-German and in connected periods: of her tears and sufferings not a word was written. Eva was astonished to find that she had said so much and such fine things; but she signed the minutes unhesitatingly, only too glad to get away at any price. As the door closed behind her and the latch fell into the socket, she stood still, with folded hands, as if chained to the ground; a heavy sigh escaped her, and she almost feared the earth would open under her feet, for she now reflected, for the first time, how much harm she might have done to her beloved. Clinging to the balusters, she came slowly down the stone steps, and looked for her father, who was keeping up his spirits with a stoup of wine at the Lamb Tavern: she took her seat by his side, but said nothing, nor brought a drop to her lips.

Mat was now called up again, and Eva’s confession read to him. He stamped his foot and gnashed his teeth. These gestures were immediately recorded as the basis of a confession, and, after sufficient baiting, Mat found himself completely caught: like game in a net, his desperate efforts to disengage himself only entangled him still further.

Being asked where he had got the tree, Mat first said that he had taken it out of the Dettensee wood,–which was in the duchy of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, and therefore under another sovereignty and jurisdiction. But, when another investigation and a report to the court at Haigerloch was talked of, he at last confessed that he had taken it out of his own wood,–“by the Pond,”–and that it was a tree which would have been marked for felling in two or three days by the forester.

In consideration of these extenuating circumstances, Mat was fined ten rix-dollars for having taken a tree out of his own wood before it was marked.

Up at the stile where Mat had torn off a sprig the day before, he met Eva and her father, who were coming up the hill-slope. He would have passed on without a greeting; but Eva ran up to him and cried, huskily, “Don’t sulk, Mat: I’ll give you my cross and my garnets if they make you pay a fine. Thank the Lord, you’re not locked up any more.”