At long last, late in the afternoon, when it was already dark, K. had cleared the garden path, piled the snow high on either side, beaten it down hard, and so accomplished his work for the day. He was standing by the garden gate in the middle of a wide solitude. He had driven off the remaining assistant hours before, and chased him a long way, but the fellow had managed to hide himself somewhere between the garden and the schoolhouse and could not be found, nor had he shown himself since. Frieda was indoors either starting to wash clothes or still washing Gisa’s cat; it was a sign of great confidence on Gisa’s part that this task had been entrusted to Frieda, an unpleasant and uncalled for task, indeed, which K. would not have suffered her to attempt had it not been advisable in view of their various shortcomings to seize every opportunity of securing Gisa’s goodwill. Gisa had looked on approvingly while K. brought down the little children’s bath from the garret, heated water, and finally helped to put the cat carefully into the bath. Then she actually left the cat entirely in charge of Frieda, for Schwarzer, K. ’s acquaintance of the first evening, had arrived, had greeted K. with a mixture of embarrassment (arising out of the events of that evening) and of unmitigated contempt such as one accords to a debtor, and had vanished with Gisa into the other schoolroom. The two of them were still there. Schwarzer, K. had been told in the Bridge Inn, had been living in the village for some time, although he was a castellan’s son, because of his love for Gisa, and through his influential connections had got himself appointed as a pupil teacher, a position which he filled chiefly by attending all Gisa’s classes, either sitting on a school bench among the children, or preferably at Gisa’s feet on the teacher’s dais. His presence was no longer a disturbance, the children had got quite used to it, all the more easily, perhaps, because Schwarzer neither liked nor understood