“What she could do” to repay the old woman at the moment seemed to consist of doing chores and reading books to her. Giselle didn’t mind—it wasn’t as if her savior was lounging about while Giselle worked, it was more as if Tante Gretchen was taking advantage of the situation by getting twice as much work done than she could manage alone. And Tante Gretchen liked to sit by the fire and knit of an evening while Giselle read. They had very similar tastes—and Giselle had discovered to her joy that the Earth Master had Karl May books she had not yet read. No matter what else was going on, or how her feelings of guilt and worry sometimes overwhelmed her, there was always that to look forward to: the warm fire, the old woman’s cheerful companionship, and getting lost in a tale of the Wild West.

She wouldn’t hear of Giselle moving on for right now. “Let’s see what happens in the next few days,” was all she said, and although Giselle was impatient to get back to earning some money, she also was not at all eager to find herself arrested for murder.

So Tante Gretchen was kneading dough for bread in the cottage while Giselle was sitting on the doorstep, shelling new peas into a bowl in her lap, when the soldiers came. There were four of them, all mounted on some of the most ordinary-looking horses she had ever seen, and they rode up the path to Tante Gretchen’s cottage as if they knew it well. They weren’t even trying to be quiet, so by the time they dismounted at the gate and tied their horses to the fence, the old woman had left the bread dough she was kneading and had come out to stand beside Giselle, wiping her hands on her apron.

They opened the gate and trudged halfway up the path through the yard, and stopped. “Good morning, Frau Wildern,” said one who stood further along the path than the others. The sun was shining fully down on them, and Giselle wondered if they were getting warm in their wool uniforms.

“And what brings you boys here this morning?” she called, shading her eyes with her hand and peering at them. “You’re the only one I know, Hans Pedermann. What are you soldiers doing out here in the forest?”

All four of them reflexively pulled their caps from their heads and stood there holding their headgear against their chests, for all the world like schoolboys in the presence of the headmaster. Three of the four stared at the fourth one, as if they expected him to do all the talking. After a moment, he did.