The Black Spider Read Online Free PDF Page B

at this house; it seems to me that if we could have a house like this, I should be in heaven. But all the same I would like to ask—and don’t take it amiss, will you?—why ever that ugly black window-post is there, just by the first window; it detracts from the appearance of the whole house. “
    The grandfather pulled a dubious face, drew even more vigorously at his pipe and finally said that they had run out of wood when they were building, there was nothing else just at hand, and so they had taken in their need and haste something from the old house. “But,” the woman said, “the black piece of wood was too short, apart from anything else, and there are pieces joined on top and bottom; besides, any neighbor would have been only too glad to give you a really new. piece.”
    “Yes, we just didn’t think it out better and we could not always be pestering our neighbors afresh, they had already given us a lot of help with gifts of timber and with the loan of horses and carts,” the old man replied.
    “Listen, Granddad,” the cousin said, “don’t beat about the bush, but tell the truth and give an honest account. I’ve already heard various rumors, but I’ve never yet been able to hear the truth exactly. Now would be a good time, you could entertain us so well with the story, until the women have got the roast ready; so you give us an honest account!” The grandfather still beat about the bush before he would consent; but the cousin and the womenfolk did not give way until he at last gave his promise, though nevertheless with the express reservation that he would prefer what he had to tell to remain a secret and not to go beyond the present company. A good many people would fight shy of anything like that about a house, and he would not like to be responsible in his old age for anything that might harm his own relatives.
    “Every time that I look at this piece of wood, the venerable old man began, “I cannot but wonder how it all happened that people came as far as here from the distant East, where the human race is said to have originated, and found this spot in this narrow valley; I cannot but think of those who drifted here or else were driven here, and everything that they must have suffered, and who indeed they may have been. I have inquired a lot about it, but all I have been able to find out is that this district was inhabited very early in history, and indeed that Sumiswald[ 3 ] is supposed to have been a town even before our Lord was on earth; but that is not written down anywhere. However, we do know that a castle, where the hospital now is, stood there more than six hundred years ago, and apparently about the same time there would be a house here too which belonged to the castle, along with a great part of the district; the house would have to pay tithes and ground rent to the castle, and compulsory labor would have to be performed as well; for the people then were held as serfs without legal rights of their own, as everybody has now as soon as he becomes an adult. People lived in widely divergent conditions in those days, quite dose together there lived serfs who had the best conditions and those who were sorely and almost unbearably o pressed and were not even sure of their lives. Their circumstances depended on who their lord was at the time; these lords were very different from one another and at the same time almost absolute masters over their people; the latter had no one to whom they could make their complaint easily and effectively. Those who belonged to this castle are said to have suffered worse at times than most of those who belonged to other castles. Most of the other castles belonged to one family and were passed down from father to son; here the lord and his subjects were known to each other from youth onwards, and many a one behaved like a father to his people. Now this castle came at an early stage into the hands of the Teutonic Knights, as they were called, and the one who was in