Walda | Page 5

he did not hear. When the hymn was ended Everett asked, in a low tone:
"Who is the woman that sang?"
"Walda Kellar," answered the old man. He took several puffs of his pipe and then he added, "She is one called of God."
The Herr Doktor lifted the latch and stepped into the long school-room, while Everett paused on the threshold. It was a strange scene that met his gaze. Seated in orderly rows, more than one hundred boys faced the school-master, who stood beside his high desk, but Gerson Brandt's face was turned away from his charges; his eyes were fixed upon a figure that chained Everett's attention. On the platform stood Walda Kellar. She was turning the leaves of a big Bible which was held before her by the village fool. The girl was as tall and straight as a sapling. The ample folds of her blue print gown did not hide the slender grace of her figure. The white kerchief crossed over her bosom revealed a rounded neck, upon which her beautiful head was well set. Her cap was white instead of black, like the head-coverings worn by the other women, and beneath it her shining hair curled about a broad, low forehead. The face was nobly moulded. Everett could not see each feature, but he knew that a pair of wonderful eyes were the glory of her countenance, which had an expression of exaltation he had never seen before on any face.
Back of the girl, knitting as if all Zanah were dependent upon her for winter mittens, sat a woman of sour visage. As her needles moved she watched the school-master and the girl. When Adolph Schneider entered the room Walda Kellar looked past him, and her eyes met those of the stranger with a look that betrayed no consciousness of his presence, although he blushed like a school-boy. Walda greeted the Herr Doktor with a slight inclination of her head. Then she whispered to the simple one, who closed the Bible, gave it to the school-master, and took his place on a stool near the teacher's platform.
"Mother Kaufmann, we will go back to the kinder-hatis," said Walda Kellar. She spoke the German so that it seemed the most musical tongue Everett had ever heard. The elder woman rolled up her knitting and put it into the capacious pocket of her gingham apron.
"Gerson Brandt, thy boys are truly well behaved; thou hast done much with them."
Walda spoke to the school-master, who bestowed upon her a look of gratitude and tenderness.
"It is thou who tamest all that is unruly in the children of Zanah," he said. And then he walked down the narrow aisle between the rows of tow-headed urchins and flung open the door that she might pass out.
"Come hither, friend Everett," said Adolph Schneider, advancing to the platform, where he met the school-master. "I want to make you acquainted with Brother Brandt. Brother Brandt might have had that bubble men call fame if he had continued to disobey the law of the Lord, for he made images of the earth and sky, which is forbidden in the commandments. But he forsook his idols before he was one-and-twenty and came into the safe refuge of Zanah."
"Yet even now I long to behold great pictures," declared Gerson Brandt, as if he were confessing some secret vice. "It is a quarter of a century since I have looked on one."
"Tut, tut, Brother Brandt," said Schneider; "if thou wilt talk of forbidden things, dismiss thy pupils."
The school-master lifted his hand, and with a benediction sent the tow-headed boys homeward. The village fool alone of all the school remained in his place. With his head bent forward he appeared to be asleep.
"We have come to see thy books," said Adolph Schneider, when he had taken the only chair in the room and placed his cane against the black-board. "Is that thy Bible that thou hast put so much work upon?" He pointed to the big volume from which Walda had been reading. It had a linen cover neatly sewn upon it, and might have been the word book so much thumbed by the pupils.
Gerson Brandt went to the desk, and, putting his hand on the book, answered:
"This is my Bible, and I have been making the letters that begin the chapters. I learned the secret of the colors long ago from a monk. It is no sin to make the Holy Book beautiful, for I have put in it no images, only the letters in colors that are symbolic."
He spoke as if he were making excuse for some transgression, but the Herr Doktor laughed leniently.
"Surely Zanah hath no fault to find with thy book," Adolph Schneider said. "I want the stranger to see the letters in it."
Gerson Brandt opened the Bible, and