every sound ceased and K. turned round. The thing he had been fearing all morning had come. In the door stood the teacher; in each hand the little man held an assistant by the scruff of the neck. He had caught them, it seemed, while they were fetching wood, for in a mighty voice he began to shout, pausing after every word: “Who has dared to break into the wood shed? Where is the villain, so that I may annihilate him?” Then Frieda got up from the floor, which she was trying to clean near the feet of the lady teacher, looked across at K. as if she were trying to gather strength from him, and said, a little of her old superciliousness in her glance and bearing: “I did it, Mr. Teacher. I couldn’t think of any other way. If the classrooms were to be heated in time, the woodshed had to be opened; I didn’t dare to ask you for the key in the middle of the night, my fiancé was at the Herrenhof, it was possible that he might stay there all night, so I had to decide for myself. If I have done wrongly, forgive my inexperience; I’ve been scolded enough already by my fiancé, after he saw what had happened. Yes, he even forbade me to light the fires early, because he thought that you had shown by locking the woodshed that you didn’t want them to be put on before you came yourself. So it’s his fault that the fires are not on, but mine that the shed has been broken into.” “Who broke open the door?” asked the teacher, turning to the assistants, who were still vainly struggling to escape from his grip. “The gentleman,” they both replied, and, so that there might be no doubt, pointed at K. Frieda laughed, and her laughter seemed to be still more conclusive than her words; then she began to wring out into the pail the rag with which she had been scrubbing the floor, as if the episode had been closed with her declaration, and the evidence of the assistants were merely a belated jest. Only when she was at work on her knees again did she add: “Our assistants are mere children who in spite of their age should still be at their desks in school. Last evening I really did break open the door myself with the axe, it was quite easy, I didn’t need the assistants to help me, they would only have been a nuisance. But when my fiancé arrived later