Even when the sun was most lavish of his rays, it was none too light there; now, in the early-falling dusk of a dull late autumn day, Wilhelm found himself in a dim half-light as he opened the door.

There was no fire in the stove, no lamp upon the table.

In the cold and darkness he could just distinguish among the sparse furniture a slim, wretched-looking woman sitting on a chair by the table, nursing a baby wrapped in an old blanket; a tall, large-boned man in workman's clothes, with a bushy beard and gloomy eyes, leaning against the wall beside the window, and some fair-haired children, unnaturally silent and motionless for their age, crouching side by side on the bed, only swinging their legs a little from time to time.
At Wilhelm's entrance with a friendly "Good-evening," the woman rose from her seat and gazed at the intruder with hostile eyes, the children ceased swinging their legs, and the workman shrank away from the window into the deeper shadow of the corner.
"The landlord," Stubbe announced solemnly.
Frau Wander threw up her head.

"Now then, what do you want now ?" she said hurriedly, her bitter tone beginning on the ordinary pitch, but rising rapidly to a shrewish scream.

"It's the rent, I suppose; and I suppose we're to have notice to quit?
It's all one to me.