Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

Metzerott, Shoemaker

“Omne vivum ex vivo.”

“What is your creed?”

“Jesus Christ.”

“What do you believe about him?”

“What we can. We count any belief in him—the smallest—better than any belief about him—the greatest,—or about anything else.”

NEW YORK

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.

13 Astor Place

Copyright, 1889, by

Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.

C. J. PETERS & SON,

Typographers and Electrotypers,

146 High Street, Boston.

DEDICATION.

“Laborare est orare.”

TO

The Clergy and the Workingmen of America.

MAY THEY WORK AND PRAY TOGETHER

FOR THE COMING OF THE

KINGDOM OF CHRIST.

CONTENTS.

BOOK I.
LOVE.

METZEROTT, SHOEMAKER.

CHAPTER I.
KARL METZEROTT ATTENDS A KAFFEE KLATSCH.

Karl Metzerott, shoemaker, counted himself reasonably well-to-do in the world. It was a favorite saying of his (though he was not greatly given to sayings at any time, his days being so full of doings), that his Socialist opinions were not based upon his own peculiar needs; and that, when the Commune should supervene, as he fervently believed it must some day, he, Karl Metzerott, would be numbered rather among its givers than its receivers.

In truth, he had some reason for self-gratulation. He was young, strong, and able to earn a fair living at his trade; and his wife,—but stop! We have not come to her quite yet.

The shop where he bent over his lapstone for ten hours a day, excluding meal times, was an odd-looking structure, in a poor quarter of a city which we shall call Micklegard; and which, if any one should strive to locate, we warn him that the effort will bring him only confusion of face and dire bewilderment. For its features may be recognized, now here, now there, like those mocking faces that peered at Ritter Huldbrand through the mists of the Enchanted Forest.

The shoemaker’s dwelling contained but three rooms. The front, a shingled frame building of one story, presented its pointed gable at the street like a huge caret, denoting that all the sky and stars, perhaps something further, were wanted by those beneath. This was the shop; behind it were the kitchen, looking out upon a small square yard, opening on a not over-clean alley; and a bedroom above, whose front window peered over the gable roof, between the high blank walls of the adjoining houses, while the opposite one kept watch from the rear: and each, in its curtainless bareness, looked equally desolate and unsatisfied.

It was on a cold, dreary November evening that the shoemaker put aside his work somewhat earlier than usual, and, after carefully closing his shutters, stepped through the ever-open door into his little kitchen, which was almost as red-hot as the huge cooking-stove, filled with bituminous coal, that occupied nearly half the tiny apartment. The other half was over-filled by a gigantic four-post bedstead, on which two corpulent feather-beds swelled nearly to the tester, and were overspread by a patchwork quilt, gaudy of hue and startling in design. Fringed dimity curtains hung from the tester, until their snow-white balls caught the reflection from the glowing counterpane, when they were snatched away, as if from the possible soil of contact, and fastened in the middle of each side by an immense yellow rosette. Upon one side of the stove stood an oil-cloth-covered table, which served equally for the preparation and consumption of food; above it, a steep, narrow stair wound upward to the room above; and on the other side of the kitchen, basking in heat which would have consumed a salamander, were a small old-fashioned candle-stand, half hidden by a linen cover, wrought in the old Levitical colors of red and blue, and sustaining a cheap kerosene lamp; a slat rocking-chair, with patchwork cushions, and a tiny old woman bowed over a huge German Bible, bound in parchment, with a tarnished steel clasp and corners, and heavy smooth yellow leaves.

As her son entered, Frau Metzerott lifted her brown, withered face, and fixed her dark eyes and steel-rimmed spectacles upon him.

“You have quitted early this evening,” she said, in the Platt-Deutsch dialect, which, with the High German of the book on her knee, was her only mode of speech, though she had lived in America for nearly forty years.

He nodded briefly, and then, as if by an afterthought, added, “It is the evening of the Kaffee Klatsch at the Hall, and I will go there for my supper. There is a little concert to-night, and dancing.”

“And a few pretty girls, Karlchen?”

He smiled, not ill-pleased, but vouchsafed no further remark as he sprang up the difficult, crooked stairway to his bedroom.

The old woman looked after him with a slow shake of her head. “I wish he would marry one of them,” she thought. “There is room for a wife, up yonder, and it is hard doing the work alone. Besides, one cannot live forever, and, when I am gone, who will make his coffee and his apple cakes as he likes them?”

With a sigh, she fell to reading again.

It is quite possible that, on the sailing-vessel where her husband met and won her, and which, to afford him ample time for the operation, was obligingly blown out of her course so as to lengthen the voyage to America some three months or so, Frau Metzerott had her fair share of youthful attractiveness; but this had been swept from her by the scythe of Father Time, and the storm and stress of life had left her no leisure to cultivate the graces of old age. Of actual years she numbered barely sixty, and the dark hair under her quaint black cap showed scarcely a touch of gray; but the skin was as brown and wrinkled as a frost-nipped russet apple; and rheumatism and the wash-tub together had so bowed her once strong, erect figure, that, like the woman in Scripture, she could in no wise lift up herself. She was dressed in a dark blue calico, marked with small, white, crooked lines, a brown gingham apron, and a small gay-colored plaid shawl over her rheumatic shoulders. Her feet were incased in knitted woollen stockings, and black cloth shoes; and her knotted brown fingers showed beneath black cloth mittens.

She did not trouble herself greatly with the preparations for her lonely supper, when her son, in his Sunday coat, had left her for the Hall; a fresh brew of coffee, a slice or two from the rye loaf, and a few potatoes dressed with oil and vinegar, which had stood in her corner cupboard since noon, supplied all her needs.

The dishes were washed, the kitchen tidied, after this frugal meal, and the mother had settled to her knitting, when there came a knock at the shop door. A pleased smile shone upon the old woman’s face as she recognized the tap, and hastened to admit the person who had formerly embodied her dreams of a daughter-in-law, who should be the instrument of rest and ease to her old age. But the Anna Rolf who now passed through the dark shop into the glowing kitchen, had been for two years a comely young matron; Leppel Rolf, the stalwart young carpenter, having wooed and won her, while Shoemaker Metzerott sat passively under his lapstone. Rumor asserted that the fair Anna had been somewhat piqued by this same passivity; but, however that may be, it was certainly no love-lorn personage who now added the radiance of youth, health, and beauty to the glow of the fire and the yellow light of the kerosene lamp.

Yet Anna was not strictly a beauty, though her vivid coloring, sparkling eyes, and overflowing vitality had gained her that reputation. She was simply a tall, well-made woman, with an abundance of silky black hair, a rich, dark complexion, and features which, like her figure, seemed likely to be sharpened, rather than filled out, by advancing years. She was dressed with a good deal of taste, in a new, black silk, with a bunch of crimson roses in her bosom; and her greeting was interfused by the consciousness of such array.

“So you are not at the Kaffee-Visite, Frau Metzerott?” she asked, laughing a good deal. Laughing was very becoming to Anna; she had such charming dimples, and strong, white, even teeth.

“Kaffee-Visite, indeed!” grumbled the old woman, taking, with her withered hand to her wrinkled brow, a leisurely survey of her radiant visitant. “What should an old woman like me do there? I drink my coffee at home, and am thankful. But, Du lieber Himmel! how fine you are, Anna! A new silk dress?”

“Of course,” said Anna proudly, “and all my own doing, too. Not a penny of Leppel’s money in it, from the neck to the hem. My earning and my making, Frau Metzerott.”

“Ach, Herr Gott!” sighed the old woman, smoothing down the rich folds, half enviously, not for herself, but for her son, whose wife might have worn them; “but what a clever child you are, Aenchen.”

“You see,” said Anna, “it was this way. You remember when I was first married we lived at his home, and when I had swept and dusted a bit, there was no more to be done, for Frau Rolf lets no one help with the cooking. I don’t believe she would trust an angel from heaven to work down a loaf of Pumpernickel for her.” She laughed again, and Frau Metzerott added a shrill cackle as her own contribution.

“So, as twirling my thumbs never agreed with me,” continued Anna, “I just apprenticed myself to a dressmaker; for it is well to have two strings to one’s bow, and Leppel’s life is no surer than any other man’s.”

“But, Anna—?”

“Yes, I know, Mütterchen. It was a special arrangement, of course, not a regular apprenticeship. I was to give so many hours a day to work I already knew how to do, such as running up seams and working buttonholes; and she was to teach me to cut and fit. She knew me, you see, and wasn’t afraid of losing by the bargain.”

“I should think not!” said Frau Metzerott admiringly. She had heard the story at least a dozen times, and never failed to adorn the right point with the proper ejaculation.

“Well, then,” continued Anna, “what should happen but little Fritz came to town, and any one but me would have had enough to do at home; but I never give up!”—she drew herself up proudly—“and so, since I finished my course, I have earned enough money to buy this dress.”

“And yet you do so much besides,” said Frau Metzerott.

“Since his father and mother went to live with their son in the West,” said Anna, “I do all my own work, make my own clothes and Fritz’s, and take in sewing besides.”

“What a girl you are!” sighed the old woman. “But why are you home so early from the Hall to-night?”

“Leppel is gone to New York on business. There is some new machine he wants to look at. I wish he would let them all alone, and attend to his day’s work. I did not bargain to marry an inventor,” said Anna discontentedly.

“It is expensive going to New York,” said the old woman, shaking her head.

“It is expensive inventing,” said the young one, her brilliant face darkened by a shadow of real anxiety. “But, however, he must have his own way, and the money is his. So he was off from the Hall, when he had had his supper, and of course,” with a conscious laugh—“he would not leave me there without him.”

“No, no,” said the Frau, her withered lips expanding into a toothless smile, “you are much too pretty for that, Aenchen.”

“The new pastor was there,” said Anna, when she had playfully shaken the old woman by her bowed shoulders, in acknowledgment of this remark, “and, I think, the Frau Pastorin that will be.”

“So?” exclaimed the old woman eagerly; “who is she, Anna?”

“She came over on the same steamer as the Herr Pastor, and her name is Dorothea Weglein. It seems she had a sweetheart here in Micklegard, and came over to be married to him; but when she arrived he had died in the mean time, of something or other, very sudden, I don’t know what.”

“Poor child! And the Herr Pastor is courting her?”

Anna shrugged her shoulders. “It looks like it,” she said. “It seems she got a service place after her Schatz died. The Herr Pastor could do better than that. But some one else was taken with her baby face and frightened ways, Frau Metzerott. Your son was eating her up with his eyes when I came away.”

“Did her Schatz leave any money behind him?” asked the Frau.

Anna laughed a little shrilly, as she moved towards the door. “You know they weren’t married, Mütterchen; so, if he did, it probably went to his relations. Well, it is two years since it happened; she will be easily consoled. Good-night, Fritz will be wanting me. I only ran over to tell you the news,” and she was gone, leaving the shop and kitchen darker and stiller than ever, by contrast.

Karl Metzerott, meanwhile, had walked briskly enough to meet his fate, but with small thought of new Herr Pastors or possible Frau Pastorins. He was his mother’s own son in appearance, every one had said, when both were younger; at present, the resemblance was less striking. Karl was a man of nearly thirty, who looked older than his years; of average height, strongly and squarely made, the shoulders slightly rounded by his occupation, the head a little large, with a fine, square brow, and a thick covering of coarse black hair. The eyes were keen and clear, the features strong and rugged. The skin was dark, not particularly fine, but clear and healthful; he wore neither beard nor mustache, and his manner showed no slightest consciousness of himself or his Sunday clothes.

But it is best that we should precede him, rapid as are his steps, and gain some knowledge of the scene whither he is bound. The Maennerchor of Micklegard held its collective head rather higher than any similar association in the city. In its own opinion, its members, or the majority of them, were more aristocratic, its club-house better fitted up, its auditorium larger, and its inventive genius greater, than those of any contemporary. Nor shall I attempt to disprove this innocently vain assumption on the part of the Maennerchor, though vanity, whether innocent or the reverse, is said by some to be a part of the German national character. Others doubt whether such a thing exists as a national type of character. My own individual opinion is that, so far as it does exist, the Germans are no vainer, au fond, than any other people; but that what vanity they possess is of a surface, childlike type, more quickly recognized, but rather less offensive, than the vanity of, say, an Englishman.

But to return to the Maennerchor.

The managers had, of late, at the instigation of the Ladies’ Chorus, issued invitations to a Kaffee-Visite, as it was officially termed; familiarly known as a “Kaffee Klatsch,” or Coffee Scandal. The ladies were to meet at three o’clock, said the program (and we assure our readers that we translate from a veritable document), in the club-house parlor; from three to five was to be theirs alone.

“Needle-work, Gossip, Stocking-knitting,” said the program, with a shriek of triumph. At five was to be served the “Ladies’ Coffee;” from 6.30 to 8.30, “Supper for Gentlemen;” and this exceedingly unsociable arrangement having been carried to its lame and impotent conclusion, the concert, or Abendunterhaltung, would begin at nine, under the auspices of the Ladies’ Chorus.

In its primary aspect, the Kaffee-Visite was emphatically what is jocularly known as a “Dutch treat.” The refreshments were in charge of two or more ladies, in rotation, called the Committee, who undertook all the expense and took charge of the modest receipts, fifteen cents being the charge for each person’s supper. The receipts and expenses usually balanced with tolerable evenness, the gains of the Committee never amounting to a sum which compensated for their trouble, while anxiety of mind lest the incomings should not equal the outlay was written on their foreheads during the early part of the evening.

When Karl Metzerott arrived on the occasion we have selected for description, the “Ladies’ Coffee” was over, and the little parlor was full of uproarious Herren, the ladies having repaired to the Hall upstairs. All parties were full of true German enjoyment, heightened by the independence and freedom from sense of obligation only possible at a real “Dutch treat.” Everybody was host, everybody was guest; the Committee waited on the tables, and passed small jokes, with the coffee and cold tongue, and the convives roared with laughter as they disposed of the viands with a business-like rapidity, which, in part, accounted for the smallness of the profits.

Strains of music had already begun to resound from the Hall, as Metzerott finished his repast.

“The girls are enjoying themselves,” he said, smiling, to his neighbor, who happened to be Leppel Rolf; but an obese little man opposite called out,—

“Enjoying? But how can they, with no partners to whirl them around? When I was your age, Karl, would I have been so lazy? No, my arm would have been round the prettiest waist in the lot long ago. Hurry, lazy fellow!”

There was a roar from the tableful at this sally, for the speaker was well known as the shyest of men where “ladies” were in question. It was even asserted that he had never found courage to ask the decisive question of his wife, but that the marriage had been arranged by his mother.

“If there are no partners at all up yonder,” replied Metzerott, “there is no need to hurry. They’ll wait till I come.”

His voice was a deep bass, rich and mellow; his enunciation slow but distinct, his pronunciation and accent those of the public schools, aided by care and thought at home. A shrill falsetto voice followed his reply with:—

“Vanitas vanitatum. If you have so much vanity, Herr Metzerott, I must make you a pastoral visit.”

Karl turned, and leisurely surveyed the speaker. The remark struck him as in a degree personal, from one whom he had met for the first time half an hour before. The Rev. Otto Schaefer, however, as he stood under the full light of the parlor chandelier, seemed rather to court than to avoid scrutiny. He was a man who could be best described by the one word, insignificant. His height was five feet one, his proportions thin to meagreness, his hair and beard of scant quantity, and not even so red as they might have been; his voice thin and unmusical. He had been in America only two years, in Micklegard not a fortnight; had recently lost his wife, and was said to be looking out for another, in which search, though the possessor of six small children and a limited income, there was no doubt he would very soon be successful.

“But you know I’m a free-thinker,” said Metzerott.

The Rev. Otto laughed. “I’ll soon cure you of that,” he said. “I have studied nothing else but the Bible all my life, and I believe in it, so why can’t you?”

“Because I have studied other things,” replied Karl dryly, whereupon he was dragged away by Rolf and the obese little man, both crying, “No theology, no religion to-night; let us dance.”

Their progress towards the Hall being somewhat retarded by Karl’s playful resistance, they found, upon reaching it, that the Herr Pastor had preceded them, and was making a sort of triumphal progress up through its very fair proportions; shaking hands right and left with the lambs of his flock. At the end of the Hall, close by the stage, stood the piano, where the wife of the obese little man was rattling off a waltz with considerable spirit. The floor was full of whirling Tänzerinen, here and there embraced by a Tänzer. Metzerott, who was really, like all Germans, fond of dancing, made his way to a group near the piano, among whom Anna Rolf’s tall form was conspicuous.

“Dance!” she cried, in answer to his request, “why, of course I will; I’d dance with the Wild Huntsman if he were here to ask me.”

“I’ve heard of him,” said Karl. “My mother believes in him as she does in”—

He hesitated, and Anna playfully held up her finger. “No wicked speeches,” she said; “your mother is a good woman, much better than you.”

“Oh! she’s good enough,” the man said carelessly. “I don’t see what that has to do with it, though; any one can be good who tries.”

“Then I’m not any one,” said Anna; “for I never was good in my life, and I’m sure I’ve tried.”

“Leppel thinks you are good,—the best of wives,” said Karl, with an indulgent smile.

“Oh! I’m good to him,” replied Anna, “and so I ought, for he is the best of husbands; then I am clever, industrious, economical, and good-tempered, I know very well; but I’m not religious, though I should like to be.”

“Religion is all nonsense, and the religious man”—and here he was suddenly struck dumb.

“Ah! you dare not speak slanders against religion, so near the Herr Pastor,” said Anna, looking up into his face with amused curiosity, as they whirled away again, Karl waltzing on mechanically, because in his confused state of mind it was easier to do so than to stop. “That girl in gray is the one they say he will marry. Eh? you are dancing horribly, Karl;” as they collided violently with another couple. “Suppose we stop.”

She dropped into the nearest chair, and fanned herself briskly with her handkerchief, while her partner stood aside, and mentally regained his feet, after the shock that had overthrown him. Yet what was it after all? Had he lived to his present age without seriously loving; pleased here or there, it might be, by a voice or a face, which he forgot the next moment, to be thus vanquished in the twinkling of an eye? It was impossible! Why, he could not even recall, now that she was beyond his immediate vision, a single feature; only a cloud of golden curls on a low, childlike brow, and a soft gray tint surrounding her that might have been an angel’s robe, he thought, if there were angels.

Poor Karl! and above all poor Dora! For the gray frock had been pinched and saved for as a wedding dress, if the young man whom she had crossed the ocean to find had but lived to welcome her. Anna had guessed aright, that his savings had gone to his relations; and Dora, in the midst of her grief and bewilderment, had been forced to look out for some way of supporting herself. For two years she had been nursery governess to two riotous boys, who adored and tyrannized over her; and under whose vigorous kicks and caresses her nature had slowly recovered from the shock it had received. Yet she had with difficulty persuaded herself to accept an invitation to accompany the wife of the obese little man to the Kaffee Klatsch this afternoon; but, that difficulty having been surmounted, wearing her wedding dress followed as a thing of course. It cost her a pang, no doubt, but she had nothing else.

Just how the rest of the evening passed, Karl Metzerott could never after give a coherent account, even to himself. Somehow, somewhere, he was introduced to Dora; he sat near her during the concert, silent, and apparently not looking at her, yet he knew her features well by that time, and could almost have specified the number of her eyelashes.

Then he took her home, actually superseding the Herr Pastor in so doing. They talked but little on the way; when they had nearly reached her home, Karl said,—

“You are not betrothed to the Herr Pastor, Fräulein Dora?”

“No, indeed, he has never asked me,” she replied, laughing and blushing a little, but looking up into his face with childlike, innocent directness. Perhaps little Dora was scarcely the beauty that Karl fancied her; Anna’s description, “a baby face, and frightened ways,” was much more accurate than any he could have given. But her large, blue eyes, with their long, golden lashes, were really beautiful; and nothing could have so moved the man beside her as the sight of that shy timidity, changed into calm reliance on his strength.

“But you would not marry him, nicht wahr? He is poor, he is a fool, and he has six children.”

“And he is very ugly,” said naughty Dora, deserting, without a pang, her oldest friend in America.

“He is very ugly indeed,” said Karl Metzerott, in a tone of deep conviction; “God be thanked therefor.”

And Dora, though she laughed and blushed still deeper, found it most convenient not to inquire his exact meaning.

CHAPTER II.
THE PASTOR’S BLUE APRON.

Pastor Schaefer was in serious trouble. It was the 22d of December, and his Christmas sermon was still unprepared: worse still, it stood every possible chance of remaining so; for how on earth was a man to consider texts, headings, arguments, or perorations, who had a house and six small children to care for, and a housekeeper whose brother had just been inconsiderate enough to die? In truth, however, it was rather the housekeeper who should be blamed for want of consideration, since the brother would very likely have remained alive if he had been consulted about the matter; whereas Mary, the housekeeper, could certainly have restrained her grief sufficiently to take the sausages off the fire!

It was early that same morning that it had all happened, though the brother had been in a dying condition for several weeks, ever since he had fallen from a ladder during the operation of hod-carrying, and fractured his skull. Therefore Mary’s mind had certainly had time to prepare itself for the shock; indeed the pastor’s children had become so accustomed to hearing her shriek wildly every time there came a knock at the door, under the supposition that the knocker brought news of her brother’s death, that, when this event really happened, little Bruno, the third from youngest, said solemnly, “Poor Mary’s brother is dead again;” but nobody supposed it was actually so.

“You had better hold still, and have your hair brushed,” said Christina a little sharply. Poor Tina was only nine years old, yet felt herself, as the eldest, responsible for the family; and the responsibility was apt to re-act on her temper. So they all hurried to finish dressing (for the odors of breakfast were unusually strong), and descended in procession to the kitchen, Tina first, leading Heinz, who was two and a half, and apt, when left to himself, to make only one step, and that head first, from bedroom to kitchen. He had fallen downstairs and landed on his head so often, that Tina said she did not believe he minded it at all. Next to him came Bruno, with Gretchen, who was six, and a person to whom nothing, good or bad, ever happened; then Franz, who was eight, and very useful in splitting wood, clearing away snow, and running errands; and then the father, carrying Lena, the six-months-old baby, at whose birth their mother had died.

“Poor Mary!” said Heinz.

The procession abruptly halted.

The children’s tongues had been running so fast about the nearness of Christmas, and what gifts the Christ-child might be expected to deposit in their shoes, that no one heard a sound from the kitchen until they had almost reached the lowest step.

“Tina, but why do you stop there?” cried the pastor, who at the turn, with the baby in his arms, could see nothing of what was happening below. “Go ahead!” he added in English, being very anxious that his children should acquire the language of their adopted country.

They were good children, and did their best to obey. Heinz made a flying leap down two steps, and, being withheld by Tina’s grasp upon his petticoats from landing on his head, brought some other portion of his anatomy, less toughened by hard knocks, in contact with the steps, whereupon he howled like the last of the Wampanoags. Tina, from the violence of the exertion, fell back upon Bruno and Gretchen, and Franz made two long steps over everybody’s head, and landed first of all in the kitchen.

“Donnerwetter!” said the pastor under his breath, but from the bottom of his heart.

There sat Mary on the floor, her apron over her head, howling like a legion of wolves; Heinz was singing the tenor of the same song, the baby added a soprano, Tina rubbed her back, and Bruno, with doubled fists, attacked Franz, who, he averred, had kicked him on the head in passing. Gretchen alone retained sufficient equanimity to realize the full situation.

“Oh, Tina!” she cried, “the coffee is all boiled over, and the sausages burnt to nothing at all.”

“When your mother died,” said the pastor solemnly, after they had eaten such breakfast as was possible under the circumstances, “when your dear mother died, children, I had no time to sit and weep. And I was able to do all that I had to do; but Mary, it seems, was not able even to move back the sausages. Come, let us wash the dishes.”

Matters did not improve as the day went on. There never were better children than Heinz and Bruno; but when one had upset the dishwater, and the other fallen against the stove, in their eagerness to be of use, and they had consequently been turned adrift on the wide world, pray, could they be expected to be as quiet as mice? It was quite natural they should find their way to the pastor’s study, where there was an excellent fire; natural, too, that the thought of tidying the room, as an atonement for their presence there and previous misadventures, should occur to them; and most natural of all that they should upset the lamp over a valuable book, which had been a college prize of their father’s.

Then it was certainly not the baby’s fault if she had a tooth nearly through, and was cross about it; nor Tina’s if she was too small to handle the tea-kettle dexterously, and so poured the boiling water over her foot, instead of into the basin; but when the kitchen door was opened by Frau Kellar, the wife of the obese little man, and her niece, this was the situation. Heinz and Bruno were seated in different corners of the room, with orders not to move hand or foot until permitted; Christina, in a third, was contemplating her injured member, bandaged, and supported on a pillow; Gretchen, to whom nothing ever happened, rocked the baby in the middle of the floor; and the pastor, with his coat off, and a blue check apron tied around his waist, was bending over the stove, frying cabbage.

“You poor fellow!” said Frau Kellar, “though begging your pardon for the word, Herr Pastor. Gott! but you must have the patience of Job!”

“Oh, no,” said the pastor. “They are good children, all. It is not their fault if they are young and little; but of course it is hard for a man,” he added wearily.

“I should say so!” cried Frau Kellar; “but now here is my niece Lottie, who will stay to-day, and to-morrow for that matter, and help you.”

“She is very good,” said the pastor, looking up admiringly at Lottie, a tall, florid, good-natured-looking girl, who had already caught up the baby, and hushed its wailing on her substantial shoulder.

“Let Gretchen and the boys go and play with my children,” said Frau Kellar. “Lottie can look after these two, and see to your dinner, and you come into your study with me. There is something I must say to you.”

The pastor meekly obeyed. He was tired out, poor man, mind and body, and disinclined to assert himself; yet he was scarcely prepared for the decided tone of Frau Kellar’s first remark.

“You need a wife, Herr Pastor; you must marry. This state of affairs cannot go on.”

“But I wish to marry,” said the pastor seriously.

Frau Kellar hesitated a moment; there are limits to every woman’s frankness, thank Heaven! especially when she is talking to her pastor. Then she said,—

“Of course you know that Karl Metzerott and Dora Weglein are betrothed?”

The pastor, still in his blue apron, sat somewhat uneasily upon a chair much too high for his short legs. A sufficiently grotesque figure, one would have said, even if his hair had not been so very rumpled, and the hands upon his thin, aproned knees so very grimy; yet, as he straightened his meagre figure and looked Frau Kellar full in the face, there was an unselfish distress upon his ugly little face that dignified his whole personality.

“That man!” he said, “that infidel, that free-thinker!”

“Well, one knew it was sure to happen,” replied Frau Kellar, with a shrug of her ample shoulders; “he has been her shadow ever since the Kaffee-Visite.”

“I tried to hinder it,” said the pastor boldly. “Fräulein Dora is good and pious, and she has no right to marry an atheist. But she only grew angry with me,” he added sadly.

“Of course,” answered Frau Kellar with a laugh, “folks who meddle with mating birds must expect a peck or two. Well, I have no fault to find with Karl, for my part. He is as steady as a rock, and if he chooses to think for himself, it’s no more than every one does nowadays. After all, too little religion is better than too much beer,” she added sagely.

The pastor shook his head. “That may follow,” he said.

“Hardly,” she replied; then, with an access of boldness, “but if she had listened to my advice, Herr Pastor, she would have taken you.”

The pastor did not resent her freedom of speech. “She is very beautiful,” he said sadly, “and who would marry a man with six children, if she could do better?”

Frau Kellar regarded the figure before her with some inward amusement, as she mentally contrasted Dora’s two suitors. “I wonder,” she thought, “if he really considers the six children his only drawback.” Then she said aloud, “If you really wish to know, Herr Pastor, I will tell you. My niece Lottie in there would marry you to-morrow if you asked her.”

“Your niece Lottie?” he said slowly.

“Yes, indeed. And Lottie is a good girl, a very good girl, Herr Pastor; not so young as she has been, perhaps, but you were not born yesterday yourself.”

“No,” he said, “certainly I was not born yesterday.”

“And she would be all the better wife and mother for her thirty years,” continued the match-maker, recklessly subtracting several units from Lottie’s actual attainments. “She is a good worker, too, an excellent cook, and the temper of an angel. And, best of all, Herr Pastor, she has a nice little sum in bank, saved out of her wages. No one knows it, or she’d have offers enough; but Lottie is sharp; she won’t waste her money on any idle good-for-naught. No; but she is tired of living out, and wants a home of her own, and she’d like well enough to be a pastor’s lady. That, you know, gives one a good position.”

“So it does,” said the pastor absently.

“Well, think it over,” said Frau Kellar, rising, “and if it suits you, mention it to Lottie. She’ll stay with you to-day, and you can see what she is for yourself.”

The pastor sat still for a long while after Frau Kellar had left him with his hands upon his knees, gazing into the fire. Presently a tear trickled down his cheek, then another and another. The pastor was weeping the death of his first and only love: for his first marriage had been as business-like a contract as the present proposed arrangement; and his feeling for Dora had been his one romance. But, after all, one cannot live on romance; especially one plus six children, and minus either a wife or a housekeeper. Romance will not mend the broken head or heal the scalded foot: it will not light the kitchen fire or keep the sausages from burning. The pastor might shed a tear or so over his lost golden-haired darling; but business is business, and when the door at last was gently opened, he knew quite well that the buxom figure and smiling face in the doorway were the face and form of his future wife.

“Dinner is ready, Herr Pastor.”

The pastor rose and untied his blue apron.

“Fräulein Lottie,” he said, “this apron belonged to my former wife. I shall not need it, if you are good enough to stay with me: could you, perhaps, make use of it?”

It was the freedom of the city, the investiture with the best robe, the sending of the pallium, the throwing of the handkerchief; and, as she promptly and proudly tied it on, Lottie took seizin of the pastor, his house and children, and all that he had.

CHAPTER III.
A PESSIMIST.

That same afternoon the Reverend Otto paid a pastoral visit to Dorothea Weglein, the lamb who was about to give herself over to the jaws of an infidel and socialistic wolf. His own fate was sealed, as he knew very well; the stalwart Lottie already comported herself with the dignity of a Frau Pastorin; but a certain latent chivalry in the heart of the little man had been developed by his love for Dora, certainly the purest and most unselfish feeling he had ever known; and he would have perilled his dearest possession, his children or his vanity, to avert the fate that was coming upon her.

His way lay from the German quarter of the city, through its business centre, to the region where dwelt the privileged few, where clustered the stately homes of the wealthy manufacturers, for whose sake Micklegard and the world are permitted to exist by an all-wise Providence. Nevertheless, this German quarter deserves more than a passing mention.

It had been originally a distinct settlement, and had only lately been incorporated in the city. There were, as we already know, old people living there who were as ignorant of English as on the day they first trod the shore of America. Indeed they had no especial use for English, since around them were German shopkeepers of all descriptions, as well as German doctors and apothecaries. Over the shop doors stood German signs, German tones resounded on all sides; even the houses, though the ear-marks of America were upon them, had evidently been erected by Germans, and were, for the most part, surrounded by tiny gardens, whose overwhelming luxuriance betokened German thrift upon American soil.

The residence of Mrs. Randolph, Dora’s employer, was at quite the opposite end of the town; the North End, where are the seats of the gods and the horn of plenty. It was a large, square mansion, built of brownstone, and surrounded by a spacious lawn, that sloped down to the river, blackly and barely enough at this Christmas season, but no more uselessly than in summer, when its closely mown turf, too precious to be walked on, might, perhaps, have soothed a tired eye, but otherwise benefited neither man nor beast.

The pastor rang at the side door, and was admitted into a small square hall, luxuriously furnished. A divan ran along two sides, gorgeous tiger-skins lay upon the tiled floor; here and there stood ottomans and lounging-chairs; the walls were decorated with Japanese pottery, pipes of all nations, and swords of not a few; opposite the door a wood fire burned under an elaborately carved mantel-shelf, upon which leaned negligently a tall, finely proportioned man of about thirty, his fair, composed, and slightly sarcastic face distinctly reflected in the mirror above, as he gazed down into the fire.

As he saw the pastor standing, somewhat aimlessly, where he had been left by the servant, this young man took his elbow off the mantel, and advanced a step.

“I have really no right to ask you to sit down in this house,” he said, with a smile that he could not make unkindly, “but if you will do so, I do not suppose any one will object.”

“Perhaps,” said the pastor, slightly bewildered by this mode of address, and not quite sure that he had fully understood his interlocutor. He sank vaguely into the nearest chair, and gazed around him so helplessly that his companion, partly from pity and partly from a certain nervousness which he would by no means have acknowledged, was impelled to continue the conversation.

“You are a German, and a minister, nicht wahr?” he said, in the other’s native language.

“Ja, gewiss!” said the pastor delightedly. “I am the Pastor of St. Peter’s Lutheran Church.”

“So? And you find the sheep of your pasture obey your words? or is the crook sometimes needful to coerce them into the right way?”

“They are as good as other people,” returned the pastor, relapsing into bewilderment. His questioner shrugged slightly his shapely shoulders, as he turned away to his old position. “You are happy if they are no worse,” he said.

At the same moment, he started into sudden vigor and alertness, with a gleam in his eye that told of eagerness for the fray. A heavy silk curtain that hung beside the fireplace was suddenly swept aside, with an angry rattle of rings upon a brass rod, and in the opening appeared a handsome, stately, well-dressed woman, of something more than his own age.

“Dr. Richards, I will speak with you in a moment; I wish I could say that I am glad to see you. Herr Schaefer, you wish to see Fräulein Dora?” Her tone was sharply military rather than rude; but contrasted a little absurdly with the meek obsequiousness of the pastor’s reply.

“If you permit me, gracious lady,” he said, executing his fifth bow.

“I shall be delighted if you can make her see the error of her present course,” said Mrs. Randolph. “You have heard of her betrothal, I suppose? Betrothal, indeed! Upon my word, I think all the girls have gone crazy together!”

The corners of Dr. Richards’s mouth twitched amusedly.

“So?” he said, under his breath; but perhaps the lady caught the sound, or saw the movement of his lips in the mirror, for she grew suddenly very red as she motioned the pastor towards the doorway.

“You will find a servant just beyond, who will direct you,” she said, “and I hope you will succeed in convincing Fräulein Dora that marriage to one of Karl Metzerott’s opinions can bring her nothing but misery. And now, Dr. Richards”—

“If you will pardon the interruption,” said that young man easily, “I wish to say that, although quite unacquainted with the peculiar tenets of the person referred to, I am entirely at one with you in believing marriage to one of any opinions so exceedingly likely to lead to misery that an opposite result can only be considered a happy accident.”

Mrs. Randolph stared into his calm face with angry amazement.

“And you ask my sister to expose herself to such a future?” she said. “I am at a loss to understand you, sir.”

“My dear madam, misery is, unfortunately, peculiar to no state of life. I love your sister, and she is good enough to love me. Such being the case, if she prefer misery with me to misery without me, I can only say that I share her taste, and will do my best to make her as little miserable as fate may permit.”

“If your efforts prove as weak as your arguments, Dr. Richards, that ‘best’ will be a very poor one. ‘Misery without you!’ Why, I will give Alice one year, just one, in America, or six months in Paris, to forget you, and be as happy as a queen.”

“I have always heard,” said Dr. Richards, coolly, “that good Americans go to Paris when they die, so perhaps you may be right.”

“You mean she will never forget you while she lives?” asked the lady scornfully.

“I mean that if you can make her forget me, you are quite welcome to try.”

“Ah! this is coming to the point, indeed. I am glad to find you so sensible. So you will not oppose her going abroad with us?”

“I shall not oppose anything that Miss Randolph wishes.”

The lady frowned, knowing well in what direction those wishes tended; but, before she could answer, the silken curtain was gently moved by the hand of a young girl, whose appearance filled Frederick Richards’s blue eyes with the light of anything but misery.

She was about eighteen, of medium height, and slender, with the unconscious grace of a gazelle. Gazelle-like, too, were the large, brown, trustful eyes, her only really beautiful feature, though the brown abundance of her hair, the delicately roseate cheeks and scarlet lips, made her very charming, at least in one pair of eyes. But to us who are present in the spirit, dear reader, at this interview, the most noticeable thing about Alice Randolph is that, despite the shy grace of every movement, and the childlike innocence of the face, we read at once that she will not quail before any pain the future may hold in store for her. Suffer she will; blench or falter, she will not.

She did not speak as she entered the room, but went quietly to Dr. Richards’s side, looked for one instant into his face, and laid her hand in his.

Certainly they seemed well matched, for he also was silent as he held fast the hand she had given him. Then his firm lips curved into a triumphant smile. “Well, Mrs. Randolph?” he said.

The lady’s face flushed again, rather unbecomingly.

“There is only this to be said,” she cried angrily, “Alice, by her father’s will, cannot marry without my husband’s consent, or she forfeits every penny she has in the world. If you marry a beggar”—

“You forget, my dear madam; at twenty-five she becomes her own mistress.”

“Ah? you have read the will? That accounts for your prophecies of misery.”

“Wrong, Mrs. Randolph. I have not read your father-in-law’s will, though I shall make it a point to do so as soon as possible. I know only what Alice has told me, and hence am well aware that she will lose her fortune in the event of becoming my wife.”

“Yet you urge her to do so!”

“You mistake. I leave her to decide for herself.”

“Harry would not refuse his consent if it were not for you,” interposed Alice. “It is really you who oppose us, Jennie.”

“And have I not good cause?” cried Mrs. Randolph. “Would your father himself have consented to your marriage with an infidel, an atheist?”

Alice Randolph grew pale, then flushed deeply as she hesitated to reply, while her sister looked on, in her turn triumphantly.

A sparkle came into the blue eyes of her lover as they searched hers. “That,” he said, “is a strong argument, Alice. Weigh it well, and dispose of it once for all. If you marry me, I don’t want that to contend with. I am an atheist, for I cannot believe in a God who leaves nine-tenths of his creatures to hopeless suffering.”

She gave the other hand to his clasp, and looked up trustfully into his face.

“It is a great mystery,” she said, “but I don’t think my giving you up would help you to solve it.”

“If it can be solved,” he answered.

“I have never tried,” she said; “my life has been so sheltered, I know almost nothing of the pain that is in the world. But you will tell me, and perhaps we may solve the mystery together.”

For all answer he stooped and kissed her.

Mrs. Randolph was furious,—and slightly undignified.

“Very well,” she cried, “go to perdition your own way, Alice Randolph. I have tried to be a mother to you, and this is my reward. You will lose not only your money but your soul, by marrying that man.”

“Be consoled, my dear madam,” returned the young man, sarcastically, “the first will be very useful to you and your children; the second can be of no benefit to any one but the owner. For my part, though I should find it hard to justify myself in holding property under the present régime, I am not exactly a beggar. My practice is a good one, and I can maintain my wife in comfort, if not in luxury.”

“And if your health should fail, or you should die?” sneered Mrs. Randolph.

“And if Mr. Randolph’s calculations should fail, his workmen strike, and his mill burn down?” he answered coolly. “In the present state of things, Mrs. Randolph, a shade more or less of uncertainty as to the future is of very little moment. It is settled, then, Alice?”

“Yes,” she said softly; then her eyes suddenly flashed, her cheeks grew crimson; she turned upon her sister with the air of a lioness defending her young.

“Do you suppose I have not seen,” she cried, “how you wish me to marry him while pretending to oppose it? I am ashamed for you, Jennie, ashamed to put your motive into words, because you are my brother’s wife. But don’t delude yourself with the idea that it is your work; I would have given up the money in any case rather than force him to act against what he believes to be right; and I love him so dearly that I had rather endure misery, cold, and hunger with him than to be a queen without him.”

Here, woman-like, her vehemence resolved itself into a burst of tears, and, turning, she threw herself into the arms that were open to receive her.

CHAPTER IV.
DREAMS AND DREAMERS.

Dora Weglein belonged to that large class of women in whom the heart is far stronger than the head. Such women feel strongly, but reason weakly; if the feeling be pure and right, their actions are the same; but if selfishness clog the action of the heart, there is no head to appeal to. These are the women who never theorize, or else theorize wide of the mark, and whose husbands often are the happiest, whose children are the best-behaved in the world.

Alice Randolph, on the contrary, was a woman of theory. It was to her impossible to act without a clear knowledge of all the laws that ought to govern such action; hence, as time and tide wait for no man, the opportunity for action often passed while she was weighing pros and cons; and hence, also, she frequently came to doubt the correctness of her own conclusions, when their resulting action had lapsed into the past.

That two women so different, when placed in circumstances almost exactly similar, should choose the same course, is at least noteworthy; indeed Alice found it rather too much noted. She was not aware of any sort of reprehensible pride. It certainly would have mattered little to her if Frederick Richards had been the son of a hangman, to put it as strongly as possible, and she had proved herself not purse-proud; but it was—yes, it was—very galling to be always likened and compared to Dorothea Weglein, her sister’s German nursery governess. But in truth a woman of theory and one of feeling (or shall I say instinct? It is a good old word, and, while perhaps not strictly scientific, expresses my meaning fairly well)—women of theory and women of instinct, then, are only too apt mutually to look down upon and scorn one another. Dora, however, loved and admired Miss Alice, and was strengthened in allegiance to her lover by the knowledge of her young lady’s course.

“It is beautiful that she gives up all her money,” she said to Karl, as they walked towards his home on the Sunday afternoon when, as his betrothed, she was in all solemnity to take tea with his mother.

“She may be glad of it some day,” he answered grimly. “When the people get their rights, they will have a heavy score to settle with Henry Randolph. He has a heart as hard as his own nails.”

“Ach, how terrible!” sighed little Dora. “But the money is good all the same, Karl.”

“It is stained with blood,” he said. “I am glad you are to touch little more of it.”

Whereupon Dora began to cry, as she told him of the check Mr. Randolph had slipped into her hand that morning, and which would be so convenient in buying her wedding outfit.

“And he called me a good girl, Karl, and said you should be a happy man. I think his heart cannot be so very hard. Rich people are sometimes so kind, they cannot be all bad. Must I give him back the money?”

“Keep it, keep it,” said Karl gloomily. “You have a right to more than that, you who have slaved for him so long. And, for Heaven’s sake, don’t cry and spoil your pretty eyes,” he added tenderly.

Dora and Alice were married on the same day, though not by design, or even with the knowledge of the latter, who had, to the grief and dismay of the little governess, lately turned a deaf ear to all confidences, and even frowned coldly upon proffered sympathy. Unamiable, very; but Alice had never been particularly amiable. It was a necessity that both, if they married at all, should do so before the departure of Mr. and Mrs. Randolph for New York, whence they were to sail for Europe; and so, one morning, Alice Randolph, quite alone, stepped into the carriage her lover had brought, entered St. Mark’s Church a rich woman, and left it without a penny in the world, except what she had in her purse.

“And you are sure you will never repent, Alice, my darling?” asked her husband, when they stood together in the little parlor of the home he had prepared for her. “It was hard for you, dear, with not a sister or a friend to look on at your marriage. Are you quite sure you do not regret?”

“What, already?” she answered, laughing. “You might at least give me time. No, sir, I’m not sorry yet, and never expect to be, in spite of your pessimism.”

“I hope your optimism may be right, my darling.”

“I will make it right,” she cried defiantly, not of him but fate; “and as for friends, whom do I want but you? Don’t you suppose I could have had scores of bridemaids?—girls who would have called you ‘too sweet for anything,’ and considered it ‘so romantic’ to have one’s only brother”—her eyes filled, but she shook off the tears and went on merrily. “No, sir, I don’t repent as yet, and don’t mean to; but, if ever I should, I am very much afraid that you will be certain to find it out.”

Dora’s wedding took place that same afternoon, but with scarcely more pomp or circumstance. She had been staying for some days with Frau Kellar, and in the immediate neighborhood of the Herr Pastor, to whom, long ere this, the buxom Lottie had gained a legal title. The pastor’s experience in haling into the narrow path this wandering lamb had not been such as to encourage any further effort on her behalf; in fact, the lamb had shown, if not the teeth of a wolf, at least the claws of a cat, and had given her spiritual guide to understand that she was perfectly competent to direct her own goings in the way.

“We love each other, Herr Pastor,” she had said, “and the good God would not have put that into our hearts if He had wished us not to marry.”

“But the man is an infidel, Fräulein Dora; he does not believe in God.”

“That is nothing,” answered Dora, smiling. If she had been able to put into words what she meant, it would have been something like this, perhaps,—

“Love is of God, and God is love: Karl loves, therefore he partakes of the being of God; and whether he professes to believe in Him or not is of very little consequence.”

But carefully remember, dear reader, I am not justifying little Dora in this conclusion, only stating the argument as she would have done, had her mental powers been cultivated up to syllogisms.

The pastor, however, understood her to mean that belief or unbelief were equally Nichts, and went away sorrowful. But Karl Metzerott, when he heard of the conversation, was exceeding wroth, and expressed himself with great force, in a string of German nouns and adjectives, some of which began with “ver,” while others referred to well-known atmospheric phenomena. No such person, he said, should marry a dog or cat that belonged to him, Karl Metzerott; if Dora objected to a justice of the peace, there was the Calvinist minister, and plenty of Americans in the same business, more was the pity. All ministers were thieves and rogues, anyhow, said Karl Metzerott, living on the charity of their parishioners under pretence of saving their souls. Souls, indeed!

It was not often that Karl found words for his thoughts to such an extent as this; but gentle little Dora was unmoved by the torrent of eloquence. She would not be married by any one but a minister of God, she said; but that minister need be by no means the Rev. Otto Schaefer. “Though, for her part, and though she had been angry at the time, Dora would always believe that the Herr Pastor was a good little man, and meant well.”

“He meant to marry you himself, if you call that meaning well,” growled Karl.

And so they were married by the Episcopal clergyman, who in the morning of the same day had united Frederick and Alice; selected by Dora, indeed, for that very reason; a clergyman of the old, indolent sort, now happily almost unknown, who married all that were set before him, pocketed his fee, and asked no questions for conscience sake. He shall not trouble the reader again, and is of importance here only because, having been Alice’s pastor all her life, she was not likely to have been aroused by his walk or conversation to any consciousness of the deep things of the spiritual life.

After the ceremony, the happy pair and their friends, who had witnessed the marriage, partook of a social tea, for which Frau Kellar provided house-room, and the bridegroom paid; then, husband and wife went home to their little three-roomed dwelling, and the new life began.

And then—for a while—how Karl would have laughed at any pessimistic theories. As for Dora, she would not have known a theory of any description, if she had stumbled across one. But she was very, very happy, our little Dora! Life had not been easy to her,—an orphan, maintained and educated by grudging fraternal care, and with her early hope nipped, in its first flower, by the frost of death. Now, surrounded by love, her nature blossomed into a wonderful luxuriance; the wistful blue eyes grew full of laughter, the sad lips smiled, and the cheeks grew rosy. She was as merrily busy all day long as a child at play; and Frau Metzerott the elder found her a daughter beyond her dreams.

Shoemaker Karl said little; but no king upon his throne ever more intensely believed his wife a queen among women. All day he could hear her blithe, sweet voice, singing over her work, or chatting and laughing with his mother, who had suddenly failed, now that she had some one to rest her cares upon. It mattered little, she said; Dora was eyes, hands, and feet to her; she had worked hard enough in her time, now she could rest. And so she lay and rested under her gay, patchwork quilt, upon her testered bed, while Dora bustled cheerfully about the tiny kitchen. In the evening, when work was over, she would often draw the old candle-stand to the bedside, and, with the yellow lamplight shining on her golden hair, read aloud from the heavy yellowed pages of the old German Bible, while Karl sat near with his pipe. Not that he listened, except to the soft murmur of his wife’s sweet voice; yet the unheeded words returned to him in after years, stirring always a new throb of misery.

But at the time the Bible-reading served as a not unpleasant accompaniment to his pipe, which he would not for worlds have disturbed or interfered with. “Religion was an excellent thing for women,” said Karl Metzerott.

During the following summer occurred the great Sängerfest, the first held by the Sängerbund to which belonged the Micklegard Männerchor. Karl had been married nearly six months at the time, and when we say that in all probability he would not have gone if he could not have taken Dora, we have sufficiently indicated that he was still very much in love with his wife. Fortunately, Laketon, where the Fest was held, is only a short journey by rail from Micklegard, so that travelling expenses were light; and he had cousins in Laketon with whom they could board very reasonably; nevertheless, the sum expended made a hole in Karl’s savings-bank account, at which he would have shaken his head dismally a year before.

With the Sängerfest itself we have nothing to do. Of course there were processions, concerts, balls, and all the rest of the routine with which Americans have since become so familiar; but the only noticeable incident for us is that when, as their contribution to the prize singing, the Micklegard Männerchor gave that sweetest of German Volkslieder, “Bei’m Liebchen zu Haus,” the audience arose as one man and applauded to the very echo. The prize was theirs; a result to which, in Dora’s opinion, Karl’s rich bass had not a little contributed.

She was thinking blissfully of this and other matters, in the train that bore her homewards, when her attention was attracted to a conversation going on between two young men who occupied the seat before her. They were students of the Laketon University, though this Dora could not be expected to know; and as one was Irish and the other a German, even more prone than is the case with students in general to discuss all things in heaven above, the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth. They spoke in English or German as suited their subject-matter or the impulse of the moment, and the first words that caught Dora’s attention were these:—

“Have I ever objected to Socialism in itself?”

“What do you call its Self? You seem to object to its most necessary elements.”

“By no means. I only say that you Socialists are short-sighted, and seem to adopt the very measures best calculated to defeat your own ends.”

“Specify, specify!” growled the German.

“With pleasure. The end at which you profess to aim is a universal brotherhood among men, a sort of lion and lamb lying down together all over the world; yet you go to work, with your secret plots and your assassinations, as if you were preparing for another Reign of Terror.”

“The Reign of Terror may be necessary beforehand.”

“Very long beforehand, then. You know the story of the tiger who has once tasted blood. Teaching men to murder makes them murderers; no less. You can’t build your social republic out of unsocial Republicans, dear boy.”

“Oh! get along with your Irish sophistry! A social republic, as you call it, seems to be, in your eyes, another Donnybrook Fair!”

“Take your time,” said the Irishman. “When a fellow falls back on old Donnybrook, I know he’s hard pressed for an argument.”

“I could prove to you in five minutes that tyrannicide is not murder, any more than tiger-hunting; and”—warned by a twinkle in the blue Irish eye,—“far more righteous than ordinary capital punishment. But, passing that over for the time, I should like to know what means you would employ to build a social republic, supposing you wanted one?”

“Do you suppose I should not hail the advent of true Socialism as the dawn of new light and life for the world?”

“Eh? a new convert! But stop! there was a qualifying word. True Socialism; that is, with all its distinctive features omitted.”

“Not at all. Socialism with all its vital organs strengthened and purified; in short—Christianity.”

“I thought so! Christianity! Why, Christianity has had her fling for eighteen centuries, and what has she done?”

“The first thing she did was to establish a commune,” replied the Irishman. “You can read a full account of it in the Book of Acts, including the history of some weak disciples, who, having perhaps been trained in tiger-hunting, were not fully equal to the occasion during a reign of peace. As the first recorded experiment in Socialism, it ought to interest you.”

“But the experiment failed.”

“Failed? In the reign of Tiberius, with Nero and Caligula and all those fellows to come after? Well, rather! The world wasn’t quite ready for it, not by some eighteen centuries, so Christianity fell back on her intrenchments, as you might say, and, while she reserved the spirit of Socialism, let go the letter.”

“She did, did she? why, Christians.”

“I’m not talking about Christians. We’re a bad lot, most of us, but it’s because we don’t live up to our principles. You read over your Gospels, old boy, and tell me whether, if they really and vitally influenced the lives of the majority of Americans, Socialism in its essence—that is, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity—would not follow as a matter of course.”

“Oh! perhaps, yes. I don’t quarrel with your religion as a system of morality, Clare. It is”—

“I know; miracles. But how a fellow who, not content with making bricks without straw, tries to build a house by tearing up the foundations, can quarrel with miracles, passes my comprehension. Look here. Do you not know that it is a waste of time to reform society from the outside, and especially by main force? The worm at the root of the social tree, my dear fellow, is sin. How do you propose to get rid of it?”

“Ah, there indeed,” sighed the German, his metaphysical soul rising to the bait, “you start the great religious problem, my friend, with which Zoroaster, Buddha, and other religious teachers have grappled.”

“And which only Christ has solved,” said Ernest Clare.

Whereupon they rushed into a discussion which, taking by and by another turn, led them into transcendental mathematics, and the possible existence of worlds or universes where a fourth dimension forms part of the usual order of things; with many wild fancies as to the type of inhabitants such universes may possess. When Karl hurried back from the other end of the car to fetch his wife and change cars for Micklegard, they were still hard at it.

That night Dora had a singular dream. She stood in a world which formed part of one of those universes of which Clare and his companion had spoken; a universe which admits a fourth, even perhaps a fifth, dimension, and which must therefore differ so widely from our earth even in the primary elements that compose what here we call land and water, that any attempt to describe it were but as the meaningless babble of an infant.

In the world whereon she stood or floated—for our commonplace to them would be miraculous, while what we call miracle is there a daily happening—there was a stir and moving to and fro, as of leaves swayed by a sudden breeze. One of their number had willed to leave them, and seeking our earth—known to him as the theatre of the wondrous drama of redemption—to don our uniform of flesh and strike one good blow against sin. And this, by a law of his world, was possible to him.

He stood, a tall, radiant figure, before One appointed to hear such requests and decide upon them.

“Have you thought well upon the matter?” it was asked him. “It is nothing that, though you may choose to go or stay, you may by no means choose your post in the battle. No good soldier would grumble at that; nor, to say truth, is the difference between what there they call riches and poverty, high and low, happiness and misery, at all worth considering. But have you thought upon the horribleness, the awful, slimy infectiousness, of the foe you must close with in a death grapple? Have you considered the sinfulness of sin?”

“I have looked upward to the midnight sky,” he made answer, “and have beheld the universe that contains earth floating there, a pale, translucent disk. And when the thought of sin had stained its purity with the hue of blood, I have been as one who, bound and helpless, beholds a fiery serpent approaching, to devour before his eyes a sleeping, innocent babe.”

“But what,” it was urged, “if you should be overcome in the struggle? For the serpent is very strong, and his poison is death.”

“The Life of our King,” he replied, “is stronger than the death of the serpent.”

“But the choice is forever,” he was told. “Victor or vanquished, hither you can never return, save as others have done, in passing from world to world. Man you will be, and man you must remain forever. Also, you will forget your world, your friends; and, though broken visions may float about your infancy, like rainbow hues above the dewdrops of morning, they will vanish all too soon before the coming of that sun of earth.”

“Morning and evening are alike His handiwork,” he replied. “Everywhere and always I shall have Him.”

Then He who had questioned him arose solemnly. “Thou bearest with thee the sign of victory,” He said. “Go in peace.”

And it seemed to Dora as if the tall, radiant form turned upon her, her alone in all that illimitable throng, a face of wondrous and eternal beauty. Close it came, and closer still; now they two were alone in all that measureless universe, and his lips smiled, and the eyes were the eyes of a little child.

“Mother!” he said, and kissed her on the lips; wherewith a strange shuddering thrill of utter bliss shot through every member. She woke to find the daylight streaming in at the curtainless window. Her heart was throbbing heavily, her limbs trembled, and her eyes were full of tears.

CHAPTER V.
“WHEN SORROWS COME.”

Do you know, dear reader, how slowly and heavily fall the first drops of a thunder shower? After a little, when the storm is fully upon us, when the wind crashes in the branches of the trees, and sheets of rain beat against the windows, there is but small account made of a single drop; but at first, after a day of sunshine, ah! how large and ominous they seem; and even so is the first coming of trouble.

It was but a few weeks after the end of the Sängerfest that a change in Leppel Rolf which had long been silently operative, began to manifest itself in his outward man. He grew morose in speech and manner, shabby in his clothing, negligent of his daily task, more and more absorbed in his invention, which now neared completion, and as he fondly hoped, success. Meanwhile, the hope brought something far from happiness, whatever might be the case with realization. Anna’s color grew hard, her features sharp, her eyes anxious, under the pressure of dread for the future, and the knowledge that Leppel’s savings and her own had been exhausted to the last penny, and that all which now stood between them and dire want were her husband’s daily wages. And Leppel had been of late more than once sharply reproved by the foreman of the great building firm for which he worked.

Indeed, Anna could not justly blame the foreman. She would have scolded, too, if an employé of hers had been found dreaming over his work, and drawing plans on the smooth pine boards, instead of making them into doors.

“If he had looked at the plans, he would have admired, instead of cursing,” growled Leppel.

“Not if they delayed work he had contracted to finish by a certain time,” returned Anna shrewdly. “Everything in its own time and place, Leppel; should I get through the work I do, if I did not remember that?”

Anna’s practical, clear-seeing spirit did not know the power of an idea stronger than itself; it was no wonder she lacked patience. Meanwhile troubles dropped faster and faster both upon herself and her neighbors.

The old Frau did not wait to receive the little grandson who came when the June roses bloomed over the land, as beautiful and sweet as they. Life and death lay together under the shoemaker’s roof; the old life passively drifting out of the world, as the young life struggled into being. It was terrible for Dora, said all the gossips; but, fortunately, Dora was one of those happy persons who take everything quietly, so it seemed to do her no harm. Anna Rolf was at the house day and night, and managed everything, in spite of the fact that her own domestic anxieties were daily on the increase. It was owing to her, she always said afterwards, that little Louis had such splendid health. She “started him right,” and the start is just everything to a baby!

There never was such a baby! Of course not. Others might be as pretty, perhaps as bright and knowing, but what baby ever was so good and loving since the world began, or cooed in such varied tones, as sweet as the notes of an angel’s harp? There was no doubt about it, he was certainly a remarkable child; and as the young mother lay upon her bed in the hot, close room, or by and by went about her work again in the kitchen beneath, many an old tale returned to her mind that she had heard in her German home, of beings from the upper air, higher intelligences who had come down to teach and bless our sinful earth. Her wonderful dream also returned to her many times, and, bending over the little form, she strove to trace in the unconscious baby features some resemblance to that strange and beautiful face that had looked so lovingly into hers. And at times she quite believed she could; when little Louis’ eyes were suddenly opened, and he looked into her face with that strange, grave look, the resemblance was wonderful, thought Dora.

These thoughts she kept to herself; they were sweet and beautiful, but Karl would only have laughed at her for them, willing as he was to agree that such a baby as their boy had seldom, if ever, been seen before.

The grandmother’s testered bed was very convenient for Louis to lie upon while Dora was busy. They remembered the old Frau tenderly. “She was a good woman and a hard worker,” Karl had said gravely. But she was now reaping the reward of her goodness. Was it possible to wish her back into such a world as this, especially as her funeral expenses and Dora’s illness had brought their savings very low indeed?

And trade began to fall off.

Karl Metzerott had a certain reputation in his own quarter of Micklegard for the excellence of his work. His shoes were not fancy shoes, he was wont to say, but he used only the best leather, and they were every stitch hand-made. One pair of them would outlast two pairs of machine-made shoes, he said, and then be half-soled to look as good as new. But there was no denying that the machine-made shoes were cheaper to begin with, whatever they might be in the end; and when business is bad all over the country, money as tight as wax, and the air filled with rumors of a general financial crisis, and complaints of over-production,—whatever that may be,—why, people will wear the cheapest things they can find. Perhaps they reason that the sooner the things wear out the sooner will the demand catch up with the supply, and the evil of over-production be remedied; or perhaps it is simply that if a man have five dollars to buy shoes for his entire family, he must make it go as far as it will, rather than spend it all on one member (or pair of members), letting the rest go barefoot. As to what he shall do when the cheap shoes are gone, why, he must just resort to the expedient of which the rest of us avail ourselves when everything else has proved unsuccessful,—he must trust in Providence.

Whatever the cause, Metzerott saw his best customers pass his door in machine-made shoes; but he did derive a sort of cynical pleasure from noticing how soon the shoes were brought to him to be mended and patched.

“I must work over hours, and lower my prices,” he said to Dora; and, though the latter could not quite understand why he must overwork, when rows of unsold shoes stood upon his shelves, she made no objection, as the idea seemed to comfort him.

Lowering the prices, however, had an excellent effect; and though the shoes were sold at little more than cost, it was certainly less depressing than to see them hanging there so helplessly, or staring from the shelves with their toes turned out in the first position, in such an exasperating manner.

Anna Rolf also felt the hard times, even more than the Metzerotts, since “every woman her own dressmaker” is an easier problem to solve than how to make one’s own shoes. Leppel had been discharged at last,—got the sack, as he expressed it; not before he had richly earned, as one might candidly admit, all that the sack might contain. But oh! for the innocent who suffer with the guilty, in this world of ours! There is never a jewelled cup of gold in the mouth of any sack for them.

Leppel’s family bade fair to have very little in their own mouths for a while, with the father out of work, and Anna expecting to be again laid aside from hers for a season. “But you have no rent to pay, that is one thing,” said Dora comfortingly, “and we will take care of the children, Karl and Louis and I. Do you suppose I can forget how good you were to me?”

Leppel himself could have lived on air, in his present tension of mind and body. His model was at last completed; more, it actually worked. It was indeed a beauteous little machine, and the admiration of the whole quarter; so that, in spite of the hard times, he had been able to borrow five dollars here and ten there, until he had raised enough to pay the necessary fees at the patent-office.

“But if you take my advice,” said one of the lenders (the loans were all to be secured by shares in the patent), “you’ll get a man I know in Washington to look into it for you. I believe he has that patent-office at his finger-ends, and it’s a regular picnic to hear him tell why this model was a failure, and that, not half so good, perhaps, took like hot cakes. Just send your machine to him. It looks to me like a pretty good thing, but”—

“I’ll take it to him,” answered Leppel sharply.

He did take it to him.

The man of knowledge inspected it closely, and carefully studied every motion. Then he thoughtfully stroked his beard, which was long and luxuriant (perhaps from excess of knowledge) to the point of aggressiveness.

“Yes,” he said slowly. “Yes, yes. Seems pretty clever: ingenious, too; works all right; labor-saving, no doubt of that. Might be a very good thing; but I’m afraid, Mr. Rolf, I’m afraid there’s no money in it. In fact,” for you see the man of knowledge had had other interviews with inventors, and he knew that things must be broken to them gently, “in fact, there’s a what-you-call-‘em already in the office, enough like yours to be its own brother.”

“Impossible! I never heard of it!” stammered the inventor.

“Oh! I don’t suppose you did; case of great minds thinking alike, you know. Bless your soul, it happens every day! Not the same machine, you know,” with an emphasis as if it might possibly have been the same something else; “but like it; just enough like it for yours to be an infringement on the patent, if the patent was worth anything, which it ain’t.”

“Then my invention is surely not the same,” said poor Leppel, in his labored English; for, though he had twice helped to elect a President, he had lived in America only ten years. “Have you not already said it was good and labor-saving?”

“Oh, it’s all that,” said the man of knowledge easily; “but the fact is, it didn’t pay. It was tried, you know. The man who owned it,—not the inventor, who sold it for a song and was happy ever after, as the story-books say,—but the man who bought it—well, he was pretty warm about the pockets, so he did some extensive advertising, and started up his works in fine style; but the machines cost like fun to make, especially at first; if they had taken, you know, he could have run things on a bigger scale, and so made ‘em cheaper; but they didn’t take. They save muscle, of course; but you see most of us have muscle, and very few of us money. That’s about the English of it, I guess. If they’d saved time, now, or money, ’twould have been different.”

“What became of him?” asked Leppel gloomily.

“The inventor? don’t know; clever fellow, though, ought to succeed at something; maybe not the first thing he tried, but something. Oh! you mean the holder of the patent? Failed, and blew his brains out afterwards; can’t say but it served him right, either.”

“It served him quite right,” cried the inventor fiercely; “he took advantage of the other man’s necessities”—

“But we all do that, you know, Mr. Rolf,” said the man of knowledge. “I never came across a patent yet that was run on Gospel principles. What I blame this fellow for is for letting himself go before he examined into things. Pen and ink are cheap, and arithmetic taught for nothing; and he ought to have known human nature well enough to see that he hadn’t struck a paying job. Well, don’t be discouraged; go home and invent something that is cheap to make, and knocks Father Time into the middle of next week—some improvement in the telegraph, for instance, so a man can hear yesterday how stocks stood day after to-morrow—and you’ll make a fortune yet. Good-night. Oh, don’t mention it! I’ve really enjoyed our little talk; took me back twenty years.”

Twenty years! So his fixed idea, his Moloch, to whom he had sacrificed work, wife, and children, his machine that was to have enabled them to live like princes, had been tried and failed, while he was still a happy schoolboy in Germany! He took the night train for home, and sat gazing into the blank darkness outside the window, his beloved model still carefully cherished upon his knees,—why, he scarcely knew. The conductor shook him twice before he heard the demand for his ticket, and then he only turned his head and stared stupidly, so that the other took the bit of pasteboard himself from the hat-band, where Leppel had mechanically placed it.

“He ain’t drunk,” the conductor said to the brakeman, afterwards, as they stood together on the front platform; “so he must be either crazy or a blank fool.”

The brakeman inspected Leppel through the glass of the door, and concerted measures with the conductor, to be taken if the supposed maniac should become violent. But there was no danger of violence from poor Leppel. He had not yet begun to realize what had happened to him; only he felt queer, and very numb and stupid.

The numbness and stupidity had not worn off when he stepped upon the platform, at Micklegard, of the station nearest his home. The model was heavy, and he was just alive enough to resolve to leave it at the ticket-office. The clerk was known to him, and recognized immediately the package of which he was asked to take charge.

“What?” he said with cheerful consternation, “fetched it back, after all? No go, eh?”

“No,” said Leppel, slowly and stupidly, “it was no go.” He walked away bent and draggingly. The clerk looked after him, then stowed the model carefully away on a high shelf. “Well, I’m blest!” he said. “I certainly am!”

It was barely daylight of a January morning, and in the upper windows of his home, when he reached it, shone a faint light. A feeble baby wail came down the staircase as he opened the door. Leppel was not too stupid to understand that. Another mouth to be fed; that was what the cry meant to the house-father who had thrown away his children’s daily bread in pursuit of a shadow. He climbed the steep stairs that led up directly from the little parlor to his bedroom door, where Dora met him, smiling kindly.

“She is doing well,” she said, “and it is another fine boy. But, oh!” as she noticed the look upon his face, “don’t tell her any bad news if you can help it.”

“If I can help it,” he said assentingly. His brain seemed only equal to repeating what was said to him. He went into the room, and sat upon a chair by Anna’s bedside. They had been bad friends for some time, but he was scarcely awake enough to dread her tongue now.

“Well,” she said angrily, “have you nothing to say? You might tell me you are glad I am safe through with it.”

“I am glad,” he said obediently, “that you are safe through with it.”

“And you had better be,” she cried. “I don’t know what your children would have done without me,—such a father as they have! Here! don’t you care to see your baby?”

She pulled the cover from its face, and he inspected it with the same dull obedience, but beginning now to be unpleasantly conscious of Anna’s angry eyes. Yet all the while the old love was tugging at her heartstrings, as she read in his face and bearing the story of his failure. But she would not spare him; Anna had not learned to spare either herself or others.

“And your invention? Of course that was a failure, as I always told you!”

“Yes,” he said in English, recalling the words of the ticket-clerk, “yes, it was no go.”

“And the money all wasted, and your place thrown away, and my children starving!” she cried, her voice growing louder and shriller with each particular; “and now the great stupid fool tells me it was no go. No go!” She broke into wild, hysterical laughter, and beat upon her head with her work-worn hands.

They must have turned him out of the room, Leppel supposed, for he found himself in the open air without very well knowing how he came there. There was a heavy fog; and, well though he knew the streets, he was again surprised to find himself suddenly standing upon the bridge across the Mickle River, which at this season of the year, especially after such mild weather as had lately prevailed, was apt to be very high, and, with the melting of the snow in the mountains, to overflow its banks, and work mischief to all in its way.

Leppel stood for some moments stupidly and fixedly regarding the swift, turbid current. Did he lose his balance? Was he seized with sudden giddiness? Or was it a deliberate plunge? No one ever knew.

The policeman who saw him fall had help upon the spot as quickly as it was possible to do so; but it was only the earthly frame of Leopold Rolf that was rescued from the angry waters. The soul of the man whose invention would not pay had gone to carry its cause before the Great Inventor, the Maker of heaven and earth.

CHAPTER VI.
IN BATTALIONS.

Anna Rolf arose from her bed with her beauty wasted, her youth gone. Instead of the brilliant, joyous girl, there remained the sharp-featured, sharp-tongued woman, whose sound health, clear head, and practical abilities were now, instead of a source of self-satisfaction, viewed by herself merely as a stock in trade, her only capital for the business of taking care of her children. For Leppel’s life insurance had been forfeited by the doubt cast upon the manner of his death, and their tiny home was mortgaged to its full value. Even the money designed to purchase his patent had to be returned to those from whom it had been borrowed, some of whom, bad as were the times, declined to receive it, and others would receive only a part; so that fifty dollars in all were left to help the fatherless and widow begin the world for themselves. It was a very good thing, as every one agreed, that Leppel had left his wallet in the pocket of his overcoat, which he had not remembered to put on before he wandered out to his death through that January fog.

The house was sold to satisfy the mortgage, and Anna rented two rooms on the third floor of the tall building that overshadowed the shoemaker’s dwelling to the left. Here she established herself as a dressmaker, but for a while found little custom. Karl and Dora had been her true friends throughout, with that sort of friendship which resides not only in the heart but the pocket. Indeed, but for them it is doubtful whether she could have weathered the first six months of her widowhood; for Leppel’s relations, who were all in the Far West, had, it is true, helped with his funeral expenses, but declined to be troubled further. He had always been a sort of ugly duckling among those shrewd, close-fisted people—that quiet, silent, unpractical dreamer; but they were very sorry, notwithstanding, that, in spite of his excellent wife, he had come to such a bad end.

“Under the Commune,” said Karl Metzerott, with an added bitterness derived from his own personal aggrievement, “Leppel would be alive and an honored citizen.”

“I don’t know,” said Dora doubtfully. “That man in Washington, you know, says that the machine would not pay. Would the Commune adopt a machine that would not pay?”

“It would pay, under the Commune,” replied Karl; but as this point belonged to the domain of the unprovable, Dora did not argue upon it.

“Well,” she said, “at least the Commune would not have been kinder to him than his own wife and his own relations.”

“Any woman might be unkind who saw her children threatened with starvation,” he answered gloomily.

“Yes,” she answered hesitatingly, loath to condemn Anna, yet feeling in her own soul, that she, Dora, would have acted very differently. Then, with a sudden brightness, “Anyway, Karl, the Commune wouldn’t make much difference to us. We shouldn’t be much better off, and we should not act any differently.”

“We’re pretty good Communists, you and I,” he said with a grim smile, “but what have we got by it? I tell you, Dora, we’ve got to live very close for the next year or so, if we mean to catch up.”

“I know it,” she answered, smiling; “and, Karl, I’ve thought of a way to save quite a lot of money. If Anna and her three children can live in two rooms, why can’t we? Then we could rent our bedroom, and, when winter comes, that would save coal. For you know we should be obliged to have a fire there on account of Louis,” she added apologetically.

“If you don’t mind, I don’t,” he said carelessly. “It won’t rent for much, though; but it will give you less to do,” with a rather anxious glance at the form and face of his wife. Indeed, Dora was not looking well; she had grown very thin, and her eyes looked pathetically large and blue in her white face. But she laughed off all anxiety; she might be a little pulled down by the warm weather, she said, but that was all.

The next day, a placard appeared in the shop window bearing, in the large, beautiful Italian hand Dora had learned in her German school, the words, “Room for Rent.” But a day or two passed before it attracted any attention. On Sunday afternoon Dora and Louis were sitting in the shop door, enjoying the cool evening air after a heavy thunder storm, when two passers-by stopped to consider the announcement, with an air that evidently meant business.

For a moment Dora’s heart failed her, then it swelled with sympathy, while baby Louis opened his blue eyes and stared with all his might. Anything quite so tall, and painfully, terribly thin as the elder of these two women, he had never seen in all his little life. When she turned to address Dora, a moment later, she showed a face with large, strongly marked features, whereupon an expression of hopeless patience sat but ill. Her companion was shorter, and of a thinness less painfully apparent; with a face from which all expression, even that of patience, seemed to have been crushed out. It was dull, blank, and hopeless; that was all. They were dressed in thin, shabby calico, bonnets, of which shabby would be too flattering a description, and faded plaid shawls, which they kept so closely drawn over their wasted bosoms that, considering the warmth of the evening, they must have served to cover further defects in their costume. Their voices, when they spoke, were low and weak, not so much from physical weakness—for there was no sign of any actual disease upon either—as with a weary consciousness that speaking louder would not better their condition.

“What rent do you ask for this room, ma’am?”

“We did wish to get one dollar a month,” replied Dora, in her pretty German-English.

The woman shook her head.

“I guess it’s worth it too,” she said; “but we ain’t got it to pay. Come, Susan.”

“Stop one minute,” cried Dora as they were about to move on; “how much do you wish to pay?”

“‘Taint wishin’, ma’am; it’s what we can do. We’ve been paying seventy-five cents a month, ever sence we come to town, Susan and me; but times is hard, and yesterday our landlady raised the rent on us, so we’ve got to quit.”

“I might let you have it for seventy-five,” said the young mother softly. Louis seemed to agree with her, for he had already struggled down from her lap, and was clinging triumphantly to Susan’s thin hand, which she had involuntarily put out to help him. Louis was not fond of sitting in laps, much preferring his own two sturdy legs as a means of support.

“He’s a pretty child,” said the elder woman with a dull glance at him. “I used to be fond of children, but, law! it’s no use trying to be fond of nothin’ in this world. There ain’t time.”

“Won’t you sit down?” said Dora. “I will bring chairs, and you can tell me about yourselves. Or will you come and see the room?”

“’Most any room will suit us if the rent does,” replied the woman. “We ain’t particular, and looking at rooms takes time.”

Dora, with Louis clinging to her skirts, brought seats, and the elder woman continued speaking just where she had left off. Indeed, it seemed as though she had at one time been a voluble talker; but that also had been crushed out of her.

“But, of course, you want to know about us, ma’am. Our name is Price,—Susan and Sally Price, and we’ve kep’ respectable, ma’am, though it’s been hard work. We are sewing women; work for Grind and Crushem,—that large shirt factory at the end of Blank Street.”

“It must be hard work,” said Dora pitifully.

“Well, it ain’t easy,” said Sally Price; “not even as easy as it might be. Some of the factories are running machines by steam, and having all the work done on the premises; but our bosses are too stingy for that. I should think it would pay ‘em, though, in the end.”

“I will let you have the room,” said Dora. “When do you want to come?”

Decidedly, Dora was a very bad business woman; a short-sighted, easily gulled, and far from sharp business woman.

“We’d like to come to-night, so’s to be ready to go to work early to-morrow morning,” answered Miss Price with some show of animation. “But won’t your husband swear at you, for lettin’ it go so cheap?”

“He never swears at me,” said Dora, smiling, blushing, and shaking her head at the same time, until she looked so pretty that even the blank face of Susan Price gained a little life and almost smiled. She held out her hand to Louis, who was again struggling towards her, and volunteered her first contribution to the conversation.

“Your only one?” she asked.

“Yes, my only one, and so good. He is no trouble at all,” answered Dora proudly.

“Some folks are happy in this world and some ain’t,” said Susan Price. “I s’pose it’s all right, or it wouldn’t be so.”

“You’d better have some tea with me,” returned pitiful Dora, moved almost to tears by the sad patience of this speech. “Then I can show you the room. I’d like you to see it. It has been our own bedroom, but we have spent so much money lately that we must try to save a little. Is there anything to be brought from your other room?”

“Our machine and some clo’es; not many. Susan and me can bring ‘em. It’s just around the corner. You see, we generally sew Sundays as well as other days. You won’t mind if you hear the machine on Sunday, ma’am?”

“If you must, you must,” said Dora. “I knit on Sunday, often; I am German. But it is pity; you should rest.”

“Oh! we never rest,” said Sally quietly. “But maybe it’s Sabbath-breakin’ that brings us such bad luck. I don’t know; but I don’t see how to help it.”

Metzerott, coming home to his tea, just at this moment, and learning the state of affairs, pooh-poohed the idea of any one but himself fetching the machine and “clo’es” of his new lodgers. Perhaps he wanted an opportunity to make those inquiries, for which Dora’s inexperience had not seen the necessity. Their former landlady, however, gave the Prices a high character for quietness, respectability, and prompt pay, “reg’lar as Sat’day evenin’ come.” They were poor and half starved, she said, but the Lord knew that wasn’t their fault; they had lodged with her ever since they came from the country, two years ago, and she thought they would have done better to go out to service; but, at first, they were too proud, she supposed, and now they looked so sick and down-trodden, no respectable person would hire either one of them. Well, Lord knew what this world was coming to, anyway. She would not have raised the rent if she could have helped it; but her husband—and here came an apprehensive glance over her shoulder, which fully accounted for Miss Price’s ideas as to swearing.

So the Prices came to be an institution in the Metzerott household; but it was very doubtful whether Dora’s savings were greatly increased thereby, even in the matter of steps. For she was always running up those steep, narrow stairs, with Baby Louis on one arm and a plate of raisin bread in the other hand, or perhaps the coffee-pot, if she had “made more than Karl and she could drink, and it never is good warmed over.”

Karl had drank warmed-over coffee many a time, and said so smilingly. His wife’s efforts at economy were a constant amusement to him; but he never interfered but once. That was on a day in the late fall, when a sudden cold snap seemed doubly disagreeable, because nobody’s system had had time to adjust itself to winter requirements. The Prices were not supposed to need adjustment, or, perhaps, by any but Dora, to possess systems; their room was heated by whatever superfluity of hot air might escape from the kitchen. On cold days, this was too little; in moderate weather, too much; only on one or two halcyon days of all the three hundred and sixty-five was that small, poor chamber of a comfortable temperature; but the Prices were used to discomfort, and, especially now that they could warm their fingers at Dora’s fire, when they grew numb and useless from cold, would have scorned to complain. So, on this particular cold morning, Karl heard a sudden crash in the kitchen, and, hurrying to the spot, leathern apron and all, found Dora, very white and trembling, looking into his face with eyes like those of a frightened deer.

She had only been going to make a little fire for the Prices, she said; poor souls, she felt so sorry for them; and the hod had slipped from her hand, some way or other.

Poor little frail hand, and fluttering, feeble pulse! such deeds of charity as this are beyond your power henceforth. Karl took in the situation in all its bearings: the thinness of the once rounded form, the panting breath, the varying cheek, the hand unconsciously pressed to the side, the dark, pathetic hollowing of the beautiful eyes. Then he said something beginning with “tausend,” which would have been totally inadequate had it begun with a million, picked up from the floor the scattered lumps of coal, carried up the hod, and made the fire himself, all in stern, dead silence. But the Prices might make the most of that cheerful blaze; it was the last that glowed upon their hearth for many a long, long day.

Karl had not been blind to the change that had come over Dora, and he would have joyfully given his life—this mortal life, which he held to be all—if he could have lightened the slow, feeble step that smote so heavily upon his heart, or planted anew the delicate roses in her cheek. But what could he do?

His work, which now was chiefly mending, paid poorly, and took up all his time; yet what should they do without it, if he gave his days to helping and nursing Dora? He would willingly have hired some one to do the work for her; but where was the money to come from? Besides, except carrying coal, which he could do at odd times, there was nothing, Dora said, in the work itself to tire any one, if she had not been just a little run down and under the weather to begin with. Karl must not worry, she would soon pick up when the spring came again.

Especially, it was not the care of little Louis that tired her; never was there a child that gave so little trouble. He seemed to know by instinct that she was not well, she said, and was as good and quiet as possible, playing as contentedly with a few scraps of leather from his father’s bench, and a string of spools given him by Frau Anna, as if they had been toys of ivory and gold. So far from being a trouble, he was even a help, and certainly a comfort to her. It was only to Louis that Dora confided how her head ached and throbbed, and the incessant cough racked her feeble body; and Louis listened with serious blue eyes and rapt attention. It was a very interesting story indeed, he thought; almost equal to that of the dead canary they found one December morning on the window-sill; as to which he never tired of hearing how it had strayed from its home, and perished in the bitter night. And, though of either tale he could have understood but little, his sympathy was always ready, and he stroked the bird’s cold feathers and his mother’s aching forehead with soft baby fingers, saying pityingly, “Oh! my, my, my.” These were the only words at his command, but they satisfied Dora.

Dr. Richards, for whose skill she had a respect amounting to veneration, had prescribed for the cough, and for a while it had seemed better; but it grew worse after one bitter morning when she had run over to the butcher’s with a shawl pinned over her head, and blown back from her chest by the icy wind.

And then came a time when help came in unhired and unsought, when Dora lay powerless upon the grandmother’s testered bed, with Baby Louis beside her, happy in her society and his string of spools. It was a great treat to have his mamma so close beside him all day long; and he was by no means pleased when their tête-à-tête was broken by a visit from Dr. Richards, though the latter did his best to look cheerful. Metzerott stood also by the bed, but would by no means smile or play “Peep-bo” with Louis, so absorbed was he in listening to the doctor. But “acute pleuro-pneumonia” had no meaning whatever to a baby mind; so the child shook his plump little hand, and said “Bye-bye” very politely to the doctor, as a signal that the visit might as well be brought to a close. Dr. Richards, however, whose heart was very tender towards children, and who had a little maiden babe about Louis’ age, remembered to bring him a little harmless candy the next day, and they became quite good friends during the few days of Dora’s illness.

For there came a day when he was carried up to Frau Anna’s narrow quarters, and played all day very happily with Fritz, Annie, and little George. This was nice indeed, if his mamma had but been there to share his pleasure. Very often he paused in his fun to call her, “Mamma! Mamma!” in his sweet bird-like voice. Frau Anna cried when he did so, and called him “poor motherless lamb,” which he considered a new kind of game, and laughed at delightedly.

The next day was Christmas itself; but if Louis had had a longer experience in Christmases, he would surely have considered that he celebrated that blessed feast in a most singular manner. For he was taken to his own home, where, in the shop, several neighbors were assembled, all with solemn faces, and some shedding tears. Louis sat on his father’s knee, and surveyed them all, until his attention was caught by a long black box in the middle of the room, near which stood Pastor Schaefer. The box had shining handles, which took his baby fancy immensely; so he slid suddenly from his father’s hold, and, before any one could stop him, rushed across the room, and seized the bright handle with a joyous shout.

The women present broke into loud sobs, but no one interfered with him; and he played with his new toy all through the pastor’s prayer and exhortation. Then some one lifted him up, and there in the box lay his mamma, white and still, with closed eyes. But this also was part of the game, thought Louis; and his baby laugh rang out strangely in the silent room. Then, as she took no notice, he pulled at her dress, saying impatiently, “Up! Up!” and when, for the first time in all his little life, she was deaf to his voice, his rosy lip quivered, and he burst into tears of helpless, hopeless, baby grief.

There followed a long drive in a close carriage,—quite a new experience, which he would have better enjoyed had the curtains been up, and his companions not quite so silent. He sat very still on his father’s knee, one dimpled hand clasped in that of Frau Anna, who sat beside him. The Price sisters were opposite, grieving sincerely for poor Dora, it is true; but they had been surprised that morning by a box from their old country home, containing such a store of eatables as would last them a long while, and grief and surprise together had so lightened the usual blank monotony of their faces that they looked almost happy.

This air of relief Karl Metzerott saw and resented, as he resented the garlanded shop windows, the bright faces of the passers-by, even the crisp air and sparkling sunshine. What right had the world to rejoice and be glad, when his young wife lay dead in her coffin, murdered by those very rich men whose gay carriages rattled past the hearse that bore her to her grave, in whose coffers lay buried the wealth that would have saved her?

From this day the shoemaker grew more silent and gloomy, less fond of the society of his fellows, more given to sullen brooding over the wrongs of the poor and the cruelty, oppression, and self-indulgence of the rich. It was well that to this temper Baby Louis served as a safety valve; for Karl kept stern silence when social questions were debated at Männerchor Hall or other places of friendly meeting. What did they know about it, he said scornfully, not one of whom had ever lost a Dora? Besides, until the time for action came, why waste one’s strength in words?

But he grew eloquent when Louis sat upon his knee in the late twilight, while he smoked his pipe; and the child, with grave blue eyes upraised to his father’s face, listened to tales of wrong and oppression as other children hearken to the woes of Cinderella or the terrible fate of Rothkäppchen.

They were always together. Metzerott rose very early, dressed Louis, prepared breakfast, and tidied the kitchen, all much more handily than could have been expected. Then father and son departed hand in hand to the shop, where all day long the child played happily with his few poor toys, or sat by his father’s side, watching, entranced, the movements of his skilful hands.

Metzerott asserted that the boy brought him good luck, and certainly his trade had greatly improved; but prosperity had rather a hardening than a softening effect, since it had come too late to save his wife.

And still he poured out all his anger, grief, and hardness of heart to little Louis, and felt, perhaps, gentler and more forgiving for the telling, like King David when he had cried to God in the Psalms for vengeance on his enemies.

CHAPTER VII.
“’VIDING.”

“Papa!” said Louis, one autumn evening. The child, just five years old, was perched, as usual, upon his father’s knee, his golden head nestled against his father’s breast. They were an oddly contrasted pair; Metzerott, with his powerful, yet apparently clumsy frame, brown, rugged face, and hair just beginning—though he was not yet forty years old—to be touched with gray, while Louis had his mother’s face, refined and spiritualized into absolute loveliness. His grave blue eyes could be merry enough at times; but as he lifted them now to his father’s face, there was a solemn purity in their gaze, at sight of which Metzerott drew the boy closer to his breast, in a sudden, irrational terror of losing him.

“Well,” he said.

“Papa, why did my mamma die?” He spoke a baby patois, half English, half German, which we should vainly attempt to reproduce.

“Because we are poor, my son, and were even poorer then. If your mother could have been nursed and done for, like a rich lady with plenty of money and crowds of servants, she would have been alive now. Money, my boy, was the medicine she needed.”

“If I were President,” said Louis after a thoughtful pause, “I would make more money, so that every one might have enough.”

Metzerott smiled, even while he shook his head. “There’s money enough, or so people say, and making more would only lower the value of what there is. That was tried during the war, Louis. The trouble is that all the money is in too few hands. Some have more than enough, and others have nothing. As if I should eat all the dinner, you know, and leave none for you.”

“You wouldn’t do that,” said Louis confidently.

“Nor the millionnaires sha’n’t much longer,” said Metzerott. “When we get the Commune, Louis, every man who has more than he needs—yes, and we’ll cut his ‘needs’ down pretty close, too—will have to divide with his poor neighbors.”

“What is ‘’vide’?” asked Louis, who had often heard of the Commune.

Metzerott showed him practically, by means of a box of lead soldiers that had been given to the child that day, and which was cherished fondly in one chubby arm.

“Now,” said the shoemaker, arranging these in two files upon his mother’s old candle-stand, which stood at his elbow, “now, if you were to give half of these to George Rolf, and keep this row for yourself, that would be dividing with him.”

“I fink,” said Louis, “I don’t like ’viding.”

“No more will the millionnaires,” said Metzerott, laughing; “but if you were George, my boy, with no lead soldiers at all to play with, maybe you’d like it better. Why, Louis, there is money enough in the country to buy every poor man in it all that he needs; and there is food enough grown every year to fill every hungry mouth from Maine to Florida; yet people die by hundreds, like your poor mother, of want and toil, just because those who have won’t divide with those who have not.”

“I will,” said Louis, “I’ll ’vide my soldiers with George, right away.”

“George is abed long ago,” said Metzerott, surprised, amused, and a little touched, at this unexpected result of his lecture; “and high time you were there, too. Put off your ’viding until to-morrow.”

He was still more astonished, and almost remorseful, next morning, to see the child march off, with a very sober face, and his box of soldiers under his arm. Frau Anna’s rooms were still in the topmost story of the house next door; and Louis climbed the stairs patiently, and arrived panting, but resolute, at the familiar door.

“George,” he said, “I’ve come to ’vide my soldiers with you.”

“Du Engelchen!” cried Frau Anna, dropping her sewing to clasp her hands. “Who put that into your head, my lamb?”

“Papa,” said Louis. “It’s so every one will have enough to eat and to wear,” he added explanatorily.

“Du lieber Himmel!” said Frau Anna, “much good your ’viding will do, you poor baby. Folks as poor as us must keep all we get for ourselves.”

Louis was happily far too busy to hear this speech, with which, as we know, Frau Anna’s practice did not exactly correspond. The question of dividing offered sufficient practical difficulty to absorb his whole attention; but by following his father’s example and marshalling his army into two columns, he at last succeeded, to the mutual satisfaction of himself and his playmate.

Time passed very happily until noon, when Louis trotted home, to announce to his father that it was “nice to ’vide. When we bofe play togevver, it’s as good as if they was all mine,” he said.

For all reply, Metzerott produced a brown paper package of a charmingly mysterious shape, and watched with a lurking smile the eager little fingers struggle with the string.

“Oh! what is it?” cried little Louis.

It was of tin, painted in gay colors, and it spun upon the floor, upon being wound, with a loud humming noise.

“Now,” said Metzerott, when the first edge of delight had worn off, “how about George? you can’t divide a top with him.”

“No,” returned Louis with a mournful shake of his head, “you can’t ’vide one top.”

He leaned his chin upon his two plump hands, as he sat tailor fashion on the floor, and delivered himself up to contemplation of the top, which lay just where it had toppled over from its last spin, as if there were inspiration in its gaudy hues. Presently he looked up brightly.

“I know,” he said, “we can spin it togevver, and it can be bofe of ours. That’s the only way to ’vide a top!”

“You’re your mother’s own son,” said Metzerott. “Come, dinner is ready, let’s see how you ’vide that. There’s a splendid pot of soup, enough for a dozen; so never say your father can’t cook.”

But scarcely had they seated themselves at the table when a heavy fall in the room above was followed by two shrill, feeble, feminine shrieks. Metzerott ran hastily up the stairs, which he had not ascended since the death of his wife, followed more slowly by Louis, to whom they were more familiar, though the silent pre-occupation of the sisters had not tended to encourage his visits.

The Prices had recently taken a young niece to share their room, and earn her own bread if she could; and she it was who now lay upon the floor with her head upon Sally’s thin bosom, while Susan chafed the unconscious hand, and wept. She was evidently quite young, and the battle with want and toil, while it had wasted her form and paled her cheek, had not lasted long enough to destroy her youth and beauty.

“She ain’t used to it yet, Mr. Metzerott,” said Sally Price half apologetically. “I’m sorry to disturb you at your dinner, sir, specially if it’s as good as it smells. Them that has ought to enjoy,” she added without a trace of bitterness.

“I’m not caring for my dinner,” answered Metzerott roughly. “I’ll get her some whiskey; that’s what she wants.”

There was silence in the room until he returned, except that, when Louis, not seeing any other way of being useful, wiped the eyes of the weeping Susan with his blue-checked gingham apron, she asked Sally if it wasn’t beautiful to see how that child favored his mother, to which Sally replied that the Lord knew it was indeed.

The whiskey, which Metzerott procured at the nearest saloon, was vile stuff perhaps, but it brought back the color to Polly’s white lips.

“She’ll do now, Mr. Metzerott, and thank you kindly,” said Miss Price. “We’ve got a little bread here we can give her; and this is Saturday, bless the Lord, so we’ll be able to buy more.”

“More bread?” asked Metzerott, who, man-like, had never attained to a realizing sense of his lodgers’ domestic affairs, “is that all you’ve got to give her?”

“It’s all we ever have,” replied Sally calmly. “Bless you, sir, what can you expect, with shirts five cents a dozen? But Polly, she was raised in the country, till her father and mother both died in one week with the typhoid, and her brother got married; and she come to the city to better herself, the Lord help her! So, what with not being used to sewing so constant, and nothing to eat, so to speak, and the smell of your dinner, Mr. Metzerott,—though I’m the last to begrutch it to you, sir, as works as hard as any, and has had your own troubles,—why, her head turned giddy, and she fainted clean away. That’s all, sir.”

“And quite enough, too,” said Metzerott, watching how, as she spoke, Sally fed her niece with fragments of bread, dipped in the whiskey and water,—not a very palatable refreshment, one would suppose, yet Polly swallowed it eagerly.

“Now, that’s enough liquor for the present, Polly Price,” said her aunt; “you can eat the rest of your bread dry, and be thankful you’ve got it. She’s a good girl, Mr. Metzerott, and a pretty girl, though I say so; and there’s them that has eyes to see it, and would keep her like a queen if she would listen to their wicked words.”

Polly groaned, and hid her face upon her aunt’s thin shoulder.

“It’s young Crushem, the contractor’s son,” continued Sally. “And when he spoke to her as I tell you, sir, Polly she comes home, and she says, says she, ‘It’s hard to put the bread from your mouth when you’re starving,’ she says. And then Susan there, she says, ‘It’s only putting off the starving a bit, Polly,’ says she. ‘Money made that way don’t never last long, and you’ll come to the garret and the crust at last,’ says she. ‘But he’s promised to settle money on me, so as I could take care of you both,’ says Polly. ‘Bless you, Polly Price,’ says I, ‘we’re used to it,’ says I; ‘we can stand it if you can,’ says I. And Polly, she says, kinder cryin’, ‘I thought I couldn’t, Aunt Sally,’ she says. ‘I told him I’d think over it, and I’d about made up my mind to say yes; but when that child downstairs looked at me with his solemn blue eyes, I knew I’d better starve than be a wicked girl,’ says Polly.”

Metzerott had listened to this long story with a frown of sympathy contracting his rugged features. But at this point a hand pulled at his short working-jacket, and a sweet voice said, “Papa, don’t you think we’d better ’vide our dinner? There’s soup enough for a dozen, and don’t ever say my father can’t cook!”

Metzerott caught the boy in his arms. “Do you hear the emperor?” he cried. “Louis Napoleon must be obeyed. Come down to dinner, all of you!”

It was good to see the starving women eat, and Louis’ face bright with the joy of ’viding. Metzerott, as he watched them, knew not whether to be glad or sorrowful. That there should be no more starving under his roof he was quite determined, yet how to take upon himself the support of three full-grown women? At last a happy thought came to him.

“I have been thinking,” he said, when the meal was over, and his guests were regretfully wiping their mouths, “I have been thinking, Miss Sally, what a convenience it would be to me if one of you ladies would do my cooking, and housekeep for me regular. You might take it in turn, if you liked; a little exercise don’t hurt nobody, and I shouldn’t care. Then we could all eat together sociable, and you could do your sewing just the same, unless you could find other work.”

He said nothing of the rent, which indeed had not been demanded or paid since Dora’s death.

The sisters looked at each other in silence for a moment, while Polly burst at once into tears; then Susan’s head went down on the table, and Sally, with clasped hands and eyes uplifted, cried fervently, “Bless the Lord!”

“Don’t cry,” said Metzerott hastily; “it’ll be cheaper to me in the end, now that trade’s so brisk, than knocking off to go to market and cook every five minutes or so. I’ve been knowing for quite a while that I should have to hire somebody; but I didn’t want no strange women around, and I’m ashamed to say I never thought of you.”

“And you know,” said Louis, who had scrambled down from the table, and was hugging Polly Price, “you know we’ve got to ’vide some day, and I’m glad of it because it’s so awful jolly.”

“The boy is a good Communist,” said Metzerott, laughing; “and now, if you ladies feel able to wash the dishes, I’ll go back to my work.”

“There’s pretty near enough soup for to-morrow,” said Sally Price, peeping into the big iron pot. “My laws! wasteful ain’t the name for a man!”

CHAPTER VIII.
MULTIPLICATION.

“There’s just this about it,” said Sally Price, “Mr. Metzerott ain’t goin’ to be no loser by us, and that settles it.”

“He’ll get paid for his kindness in heaven, anyhow,” returned Susan tearfully.

“Heaven!” the scorn in Miss Price’s voice was for Susan, not the country she had named. “He’s goin’ to get paid right here on earth, and you can just take hold and help me, Susan Price, instead of settin’ there a-snivellin’. Some folks thinks a deal too much of heaven, anyway.”

“Why, Aunt Sally!”

“It’s as true as the Gospel, child. I don’t say but it’s a nice place, heaven, after you get there; and when you’re real tired and hungry and sick, and not a minute to take a long breath, it’s a solid satisfaction to think as there’s a time comin’ when you won’t need to eat nor breathe nor work no more; but I don’t believe in settin’ on your haunches, when a man’s feedin’ you out of his own pocket, and talk about his havin’ his reward in heaven. If folks that talk so much about heaven hereafter would quit right off, and set to work to make things a little more like heaven here, ’twould be lots better. We, includin’ Polly, wouldn’t ‘a’ been so near the other place, Susan Price, if things was run on that plan here below.”

“That’s so,” answered Susan meekly.

“I went once to see a preacher, and ask him to get us somethin’ to do,” said Sally. “It wasn’t long after we come to town, and before we’d begun sewin’ on Sunday, so I went Sunday afternoon. He was a real nice man, always shook hands with both hands, and had an awful affectionate manner, and I thought he’d be the very one to help us. Well, he said he was sorry we were so bad off, though he guessed there was others worse off than us; for that was before our good clo’es wore out, and I looked pretty nice. Then he told me how many people in his congregation were in want of somethin’ to do; and said we ought to be thankful for any kind of a job, no matter how little it paid.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Susan.

“I do,” cried Polly impetuously. “A job that takes all your time to earn enough to keep from starving is just robbery and slavery, that’s all.”

Aunt Sally assented gravely. “If you leave your work to look for another job, you are sure to starve before you find one,” she said, “and you might as well be chained to a oar, like those people in the ancient history. Fact is, we was worse off than galley-slaves, Sue; for ’twas the captain’s interest to keep them alive.”

“But it’s nobody’s interest to keep sewing women alive,” said Polly bitterly; “there’s plenty to take our places, if we drop. The labor market is overstocked, they say.”

“That’s what my preacher said,” replied Sally; “and all the comfort he had for me was that, if I did my duty, and came to church reg’lar, I’d git to heaven finally. I thanked him for his good advice, but I ain’t been to his church since.”

“Mr. Metzerott don’t believe in heaven,” said Polly, “maybe that’s why he’s so kind to us here on earth.”

“I believe in heaven,” said Susan slowly.

“You ain’t quite a born fool, Susan Price, that’s why. Of course the good Lord is goin’ to fix things so the poor will have a fair show somewhere. But we ain’t the good Lord, so far’s I know; and it’s our place to keep things fair and right on this earth, so far’s we can.”

“And that ain’t far,” said Susan.

“It’s as far as Mr. Metzerott, anyhow,” returned Sally rather sharply, “and we ain’t got no call to go no further, yit. And what I’m thinking about is his baker’s bill.”

The Prices were alive and awake again, no doubt about it; as for Polly, she had never been asleep. Her strong, vivid, ardent nature, craving happiness with every fibre, could never, I think, have sunk into that tired and hopeless acquiescence in things as they ought not to be, that inanition of mind, heart, and soul, which had long ago devoured the youth and vitality of the sisters. And yet the vitality, after all, had not utterly departed, and the feeble currents in their veins stirred in sympathy with the young life beating its wings against the bars of poverty, and tugging so vainly at the chain of starvation wages. Then came rescue and hope, and the awakening was complete.

Sally Price possessed, without being at all conscious of it, a rare organizing faculty. Perhaps no other sewing-woman in Micklegard could have accomplished as much with four hands and only one machine as she had done; but the very impossibility of doing much with such slight materials, the consciousness of wasted power, and sense of the injustice which for such grinding work gave such ground-down wages, had helped to crush out from her heart everything but hopeless patience. That she had not grown hard and bitter was a strange and beautiful thing; perhaps, even before the advent of Polly, there were three at work in that poor upper room, even as four walked in the Holy Children’s burning, fiery furnace.

But now, Sally had something to organize, and a purpose in the organization; she was quite resolved, as she said, that Mr. Metzerott “shouldn’t lose nothin’” by his kindness to her and hers. Whether his expenses were exactly the same as when he himself had constituted his whole domestic staff, with the exception of an old woman who came three times a week to do “chores” and washing, is doubtful; but they were certainly not materially increased; and, taking into account the shoemaker’s additional time for work, the arrangement might be considered one of great economy. First of all, there was the baker, who had swallowed all the Prices’ earnings in the past, in return for a very moderate portion of the staff of life, strongly flavored with alum. Miss Price made up her mind at once that the baker must go. At her suggestion, Karl bought a bag of flour, and Polly, who was said to be a “master hand” at the process, was appointed bread-maker in chief; while Sally and Susan took their turn of exercise at the wash-tub and ironing-board.

Sally managed it all. They did fully as much work for Grind and Crushem; for, after all, only a certain amount can be done with one machine, and there was always one of them with her foot on the treadle; while the little house was nearly scrubbed into holes, and everything about it cleaned until it shone again. The old woman vanished; chores became a thing of the past; and Polly’s delicate cooking gave Karl, as he declared, a new pleasure in eating.

Then began the old story of the loaves and fishes, inevitable multiplication. One day Louis brought home the tidings that Frau Anna had a bad headache, so bad that she could not lift her head from her pillow, and the children had no dinner but bread.

“I guess I’ll go in and see to ‘em,” said Sally thoughtfully. “Now I’ve got to eatin’ reg’lar meals again, it seems pretty bad to have nothin’ but bread for dinner.”

She went accordingly. There was in the cupboard a piece of cold, cooked beef about four inches square, an onion, and three raw Irish potatoes; for, as Frau Anna explained, she had not been able to go out to buy anything that day.

“Buy!” said Sally, “why should you? There’s dinner enough here for these children, with bread, and that you’ve got plenty of. But I know you don’t want no smell of cookin’ under your nose, so the children can come and play with Louis; and by and by I’ll send you over some tea and toast.”

The beef, potatoes, and onion, chopped up into an iron skillet, covered with water, and re-enforced by a spoonful of turnips and the remains of a can of tomatoes, which Sally had been keeping for some occasion when they would “come in handy,” produced, at the end of twenty minutes, a very savory stew, to which the children did ample justice. But the tea and toast which after a while Sally carried in to her neighbor became the occasion of such sighs over the days when Frau Anna had made her own bread, and her children had had wholesome food to eat, that it resulted, a day or two later, in an offer from Polly to bake for Frau Anna along with themselves.

“And I don’t see why I shouldn’t do your cooking, all of it,” said Polly. “Sally keeps such a strict account of all we spend that she could tell in a minute what you ought to pay.”

“The cost of the things in market, and maybe a little extra to Mr. Metzerott for the fire,” said Sally. “I used to be quick at figures, Mis’ Rolf; and if I ain’t forgot how, I’ll cipher it out, and let you know. You needn’t be afraid we’ll cheat you, or make anything out of you; we’ve been made too much out of ourselves.”

But when it was also arranged that they should do Frau Anna’s washing, Sally concluded that they might give up their work at Grind and Crushem’s.

“And how it feels to be free again, you won’t never know, Mr. Metzerott,” she said, when the deed had been done.

“Now I want to know,” said Karl, looking up from his work with a quizzical smile, “what’s the difference between the way you’re living now and domestic service. Wouldn’t it have been better to live out with some rich person, who would have paid good wages, than to work for Grind and Crushem?”

“Maybe it would,” said Sally thoughtfully. “Hired girls do get good wages, that’s so.”

“It’s your American independence,” said Metzerott. “You don’t find German girls willing to starve rather than live out.”

“There wasn’t much independence at our shop,” answered Sally dryly. “I don’t know why it is, Mr. Metzerott, but American girls won’t live out ef they can do anything else; or ef they do, they feel kinder degraded, and it makes ‘em so uppish and contrary there’s no livin’ in the house with ‘em. I’ve seen ‘em real sassy, just because they felt lowered in their own eyes.”

“They were fools!” said Metzerott briefly. “What is there in honest work to degrade any one?”

“’Tain’t the work,” said Sally; “they’d do that at home, and not feel a mite degraded; and ’tain’t the wages, for ’twouldn’t degrade ‘em to earn that behind a counter. Nor ’tain’t sass, though there’s many a lady as talks to her help like I wouldn’t to a dog. Only way I can explain it, Mr. Metzerott, it must be the Constitution of the United States. You see that makes every man as good as anybody else; but it ain’t lived up to, and the girls feel it, and that’s what riles ‘em. Worse than that, they feel they ain’t as good as the young ladies they wait on, not so pretty, nor so educated, nor so refined; but they might have been if they’d had the same advantages; they might have had just such little white hands and soft voices and pretty ways, that keep the young men a-bendin’ over their chairs all the evenin’. Don’t you s’pose many a girl sees the difference between her farmer beau and the young city doctor or lawyer that comes to the country for his holiday?” (Poor Sally! perhaps she spoke from some past bitter experience of her own!) “And so I think it’s that, Mr. Metzerott, that keeps girls from hirin’ out. They won’t take a menial position where they feel, if they had their rights, they’d be equals,—real equals, I mean, not constitutional or sassy ones. Now, your German girls ain’t taught about equality; they are used to counts and barons and dukes, and all of them people, from their cradles; they ain’t got freedom in the blood, like us Americans.”

“But we breathe it in,” said Metzerott, with gleaming eyes; “and then the remembrance of past wrongs, and the sight of present ones, makes us desperate. We shall teach you Americans, some day, to live up to your own principles.”

“But you won’t get us to fire a gun,” said Sally tersely. “till we can see the whites of their eyes.”

CHAPTER IX.
FORS FORTUNA.

The very next day, Louis, by what his father and Dr. Richards would have agreed to call “blind chance,” found a silver quarter lying in the gutter before his own door. Yet it was certainly not blind chance, but sheer hard work, that had worn a hole in Frau Anna’s thimble.

Louis had been wishing very much that he could buy her another, for she had said that it was almost impossible to use the old one. Once the needle had slipped in through the hole, and run up under her nail, which had hurt her very much indeed; and the necessity of keeping it away from the worn place hindered her work. Louis and George had talked the matter over very seriously, with many wishes that they were as big as Franz and Bruno, the pastor’s sons, and could earn money by chopping wood and shovelling snow. And now here was a whole silver quarter, which would surely buy many things beside a thimble.

He started at once in search of George, whom he found sitting on a box outside the grocery, consuming an apple which had been given him by the grocer’s wife. Now, if the apple had been Louis’, a part of it would as surely have found its way to George as the early worm finds out the nest where the mother bird’s brood wait to welcome it; but this view of the case did not occur to any one but the good-natured grocery woman, who showed her appreciation of the situation by bestowing another apple on Louis.

But before the child would bite even once into its red and tempting cheeks, he related to George all the circumstances concerning the finding of the quarter, and the marvellous purchasing power thereto appertaining.

“Where does the thimble-man live?” asked George, when they had planned to buy everything in town,—from a live pony to a penny trumpet.

“I don’t know,” said Louis gravely; but the grocery woman, who had been standing in the doorway listening to the conversation, with her hands on her hips, probably to keep her fat sides steady, they shook so with laughter, interrupted them.

“Do you know where Martin, the jeweller, lives?”

“Yes,” said Louis brightly. “’Tisn’t far; he mended our clock.”

“Well,” said the grocery woman, “you go to him, and tell him you want a thimble. Mind you say who it’s for. Himmel! There was a day when he’d have given a thousand thimbles to call your mother Anna Martin.”

“That ain’t her name,” said George slowly, “her name is Anna Rolf.”

The fat sides shook again. “You do as I tell you,” she said; “and see here, Louis Metzerott, you eat that apple up, do you hear, and don’t give none of it to nobody. Apples is good for boys, they fall in their legs, and make ‘em grow. Verstanden?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Louis, obediently taking such a very large bite that he had some difficulty in disposing of it.

“And if I was you,” continued the grocery woman, “I’d buy the thimble first, and see how much you have left towards a pony. Fact is, ponies are expensive to feed, anyhow; and I wouldn’t advise you to invest in ‘em just yet. Won’t it do just as well if I buy you each a gingerbread horse, next time I go to market?”

“No, ma’am, not quite as well, because a pony is alive, and we could ride on it,” said Louis gravely. “But a gingerbread horse is very good to eat,” he added politely.

“Herr Martin,” said Louis, as the two children trotted, hand in hand, into the shop, “we want to buy a thimble.”

“Presently, my boy,” said the jeweller, setting upon the counter a tray full of small, dainty-looking pins. “Now, ma’am,” he said; but his customer’s attention had been drawn from his wares to the purer gold that curled under Louis’ woollen cap.

“What a dear little boy,” she said, “and so straight and strong!” Her red lip was caught for one moment between her teeth, a mist came over the brown eyes, she turned away, and busied herself in selecting a pin.

Her husband, who had been leaning idly against the window frame, looking into the street,—for jewelry did not particularly interest Dr. Richards,—now came and stood at her elbow. He said nothing, but his mere presence and the consciousness of his sympathy strengthened her nobler self, so that in a little while she turned to Louis again, with a smile that was sad but very sweet.

“Attend to the children, Mr. Martin,” she said; “they don’t like to wait. Are you buying a thimble for your mother, my little man?”

“My mother’s dead,” said Louis, “because we are poor, and the millionnaires wont ’vide. This thimble is for George’s mother.”

“You don’t remember the boy, Alice,” said Dr. Richards; “indeed I don’t know that you ever saw him; he is Dora Metzerott’s child.”

“He is very like her,” said Alice slowly. Her mind went back to the days when she and Dora had been “evened” to one another as equally headstrong in marrying for love and disregarding orthodoxy. She would be proud and happy to be “evened” to Dora now, in another respect.

Meanwhile Herr Martin had produced a case of thimbles, by whose silvery brightness the boys were so impressed that they began to doubt whether their quarter would buy so very many of them after all.

“But how much money have you got?” asked the jeweller.

“A real quarter,” answered Louis proudly. “I found it this morning.”

“Oh! found it, did you? Then how do you know but it belongs to me?”

“You’re in fun,” said the child gravely; “my papa said it might belong to me.”

“Oh! well, if your papa said so! But doesn’t any of it belong to George?”

“Yes,” said Louis, “me and George always ’vides everyfing.”

“That’s just about where it is,” said the jeweller, with a glance at his older customers, who were listening attentively, “me and George ’vides; George and me don’t always. But, I say, young uns, you don’t suppose I can sell you a thimble for twenty-five cents, do you?”

Louis’ lip quivered. “Can’t you?” he said. “It is for George’s mother; and Frau Tundt said there was a day when you’d give a thousand thimbles to call her Anna Martin.”

“Did Frau Tundt say that?” cried the jeweller, crossing his arms on the counter and laughing heartily. “Well, she’s right; so I would, so I would! Ah! she was a fine girl, and no mistake.”

Still laughing, he selected a very pretty thimble, rapidly enclosed it in a pink-cottoned box, wrapped that again in white paper, and gave it to Louis.

“There,” he said, “give that to Frau Anna with a Christmas greeting from her old sweetheart. No, I don’t want your quarter. Keep it to buy seed-cakes.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Louis. “‘A Christmas greeting from her old sweetheart!’ I won’t forget. But what is Christmas?” he added.

“Ach! that father of yours, with his free-thinking! Can you believe it, Mrs. Richards! a man who won’t let his boy have a Christmas,” cried Herr Martin indignantly.

Alice stooped and kissed the sweet face. “I knew your mother, my dear, and I will come to see you soon, and tell you about Christmas. It is a beautiful story.”

Dr. and Mrs. Richards drove home very silently. It was not often that they had the pleasure of an hour’s shopping together, and yet this expedition in preparation for Christmas had had its own bitterness. It had been seven years since Frederick Richards asked Alice Randolph to share a future which his pessimism forbade him to gild with hope; seven years since she had announced her choice of misery with rather than happiness without him. Which had she found? There had been love in her lot, plenty of it; and, though not wealth, yet no touch of “poortith cauld.” Yet the silence between them was a sad silence; and once Alice laid her hand on his arm, and said, half below her breath,—

“Fred, tell me, how do you bear your life, not believing, or trying to believe, that God knows best, and orders all for our good?”

“Do you believe that, Alice?” he asked.

“I try,” she said; “oh! indeed I try hard.”

“That’s right,” he said gently; “it is the best comfort you can find.”

“But it does seem unjust,” she said. “Look at that little Louis, so strong and active, and then think of”—

“Well, well,” he answered, “Freddy has his own pleasures. I don’t know a happier boy.”

“That is true,” she said, with a smile through her tears; “he is very happy!” and then she sank again into her own thoughts, and forgot to notice that her question remained unanswered.

In a few moments they stopped at their own door; and Alice, flying upstairs to what was still called the nursery, was greeted by a rapturous shout, and clasped by two little arms that seemed as if they would never unclose to let her go again. And Alice, sitting on the floor while she removed her bonnet, had no mist of tears to dim her brown eyes, which were so much like Freddy’s own; she was the bright, merry playfellow, full of life and fun, and brimming over with wonderful and delightful songs and stories of all descriptions. Dr. Richards, too, brought only sunshine into Freddy’s nursery; he took off his pessimism with his overcoat, or left it bottled in alcohol on a shelf in his office; so there was really little wonder that Freddy was happy.

Who can tell just how it happened? Was it mere blind chance, or the outcome of a taint in the blood, due to some unknown ancestral sin? Whatever the cause, Alice Richards had been, as the phrase goes, “unlucky with her children.” The eldest had died in babyhood: and the boy, with his great, pathetic brown eyes and laughing, rosy mouth, would never walk; his little spine was all bent and distorted, and his lower limbs quite useless. He had suffered much already in his short four years of life, would suffer far more as he grew older. Dr. Richards knew this,—knew it so keenly that that other knowledge, that by scarce a possibility could Freddy live to be a man, was almost a relief by contrast. And the child was his father’s idol. Well might Alice ask how he could bear his life.

Yet there was plenty of merriment at that little dinner-table. Freddy was carried down between his father and John, the doctor’s “man.” There were rings on the sides of Freddy’s chair through which poles could be passed, and there were screws to tighten them, so that the transit need cause no jar to the little frame. John went first, not backward, for fear of a misstep, but with the poles over his shoulders; and the doctor came behind, keeping his end of the poles level with John’s. Freddy wore a little scarlet wrapper, embroidered with gay flowers, and concealing the poor shrunken limbs, from which any eye but his mother’s would have instinctively turned away. He had a small pale face, with a broad forehead set in rings of brown hair, large brown eyes, and vividly red lips. Sometimes, too, there was a bright spot of color on either cheek, and then one would almost have called him a beautiful child; but that sort of beauty was not a welcome sight to Dr. Richards.

The child enjoyed going down to dinner as he enjoyed everything; and beat upon the arms of the chair with his little thin hands, as he called gleefully, “Look out, mamma, here comes the ‘Ark of the Covenant!’” which was a name he had taken from his picture Bible.

Freddy’s greatest pleasure was to hear his mother’s stories, and she had the gift of finding true ones as interesting as any fairy tale. One of his favorites soon became the story of the little boy who had no mamma, and had never heard of Christmas, such deprivations, in Freddy’s eyes, that the little boy’s health and activity could not be accepted as in the remotest degree a compensation.

“We must tell him about Christmas right away, mamma,” said Freddy, who was old and wise beyond his years. “If he only had a picture of the Christ-child, now.”

“That’s a good suggestion, Freddy. I’ll make a copy of yours. I think I can do it before Christmas.”

“And he can come to my tree, mamma?”

“Just as you like, my darling.”

Freddy’s picture of the Christ-child was one which had evidently been adapted from Ary Scheffer’s “Christus Liberator;” but the central figure was that of a smiling child, whose little arms were outstretched to those haggard and chained, appealing for deliverance. Around it was written the angels’ song, “Glory to God in the highest; on earth peace, good will towards men.” Dr. Richards had noted with inward bitter amusement the picture and the motto. “Good will towards men!” and all those hungry, burdened arms! and only a child to work their liberation! It was Christianity’s pictured confession of her own futility, he thought. Meanwhile, it satisfied his wife and child, who surely needed all the comfort they could get; and what had he, that was better, to give them? So he held his peace, or rather that simulation of peace which is found in silence. Real peace he had none, either to hold or let go. For, seeing no trace in all the universe of a sheltering, guiding, and protecting Father’s hand,—holding the world to be governed by blind, unconscious, irresistible force,—there were two questions ever present to his mind: one, “How would my boy endure one day of absolute poverty?” the other, “If my health should fail, as it may, who will protect him from this, or any evil?”

Blind chance? Even the old Romans knew better. Was not Fors Fortuna the goddess of the all-seeing, radiant dawn?

CHAPTER X.
HOMINIBUS BONÆ VOLUNTATIS.

All the world was getting ready for Christmas; there was no doubt about that. As for South Micklegard, as the German quarter was usually called, it was absolutely upon its head with delight. For there is no season of the year that a German loves better than the winter solstice, the ancient yule feast of his far-away forbears, the birthday of the “Golden Child,” as the Veda hath it. Is it indeed the true birthday of the child Christ Jesus? Who knows!

Nay, oh my brothers! who, with your factions, and the smoke of your unbrotherly strife rising to heaven, have marred every scene, every step of that sinless life,—let us be thankful for that which remains unknown. Birthday and death-day, His cradle, Golgotha, and the sepulchre whence rose His living body, the Father keeps hidden in the holy silence of His own recollection. Therefore, since with Him is neither past nor future, but an eternal now, those days are ever present with us. Each morn, each evening, He is born again, dies again, for us, in us; and finds in our hearts His Bethlehem, His Calvary, His tomb.

It was Louis’ first Christmas, so far as his own consciousness was concerned. His mother had indeed set out his little socks for the Christ-child to fill, when he was but six months old, and had not yet put on shoes; but Louis certainly remembered nothing of that. And since Dora’s death Christmas had been a sad day to Karl Metzerott; a day which he spent as quietly as possible, avoiding merrymaking, and keeping Louis to himself, quite out of hearing of any mention of the feast or its occasion. But, however feasible this plan of operations might have hitherto proved, at five and a half, Louis was not to be so disposed of.

“Papa,” he said, fetching his little stool with an air that meant business, and seating himself so as to gaze into his father’s face, with large, serious eyes, “papa, what is Christmas?”

“Who told you anything about it?” asked the man, a little uneasily, seeing before him the dilemma of Christmas gayeties on the one hand, or disappointment to Louis on the other; both of which he felt equally unwilling to accept.

“It was Herr Martin,” said Louis. “He said you were a free-thinker, who would let your boy have no Christmas.”

“Your mother was buried on Christmas Day, Louis, and I do not care, therefore, to laugh and be merry on that day. But Jeweller Martin may mind his own business,” he added angrily.

“Then do people laugh and be merry on Christmas? What is Christmas, papa?”

“A bit of nonsense, Louis, that you and I are too wise for. Come, I’ll tell you all about it. It’s only an old fairy tale, anyway, and you like fairy tales.”

“Ja, wohl!” said the child, with brightening eyes. “I like them so much.”

“Well, they say that once upon a time the world was very wicked, and the Christ-child came to save it. He was born on Christmas, and, when he grew up, preached to the people, and told them to repent and be good; but, instead of that, the rich men of those days took him and killed him. That part of the story is true, Louis; but the foolish part is this. Herr Martin’s little boy, and George, and all the children about here, believe that the Christ-child is still alive in some place they call heaven; and that he comes every Christmas Eve, and fills their shoes with candy and toys, and such stuff.”

“Oh!” Louis gave a long sigh. “And he don’t, really?” he asked wistfully.

“Really? No. How could he? The fathers and mothers fill the shoes, and then lie about it to the children.” He paused for a moment, as the vision rose in his heart of those two little white socks, and his wife’s eyes, as she looked up at him, smiling, on her knees beside them, to complain that they were so small that nothing would go in. “I don’t say but it’s a pretty story,” he added hastily, “but I’ve never told you a lie yet, Louis.”

“I—I—wish,” said the boy, “I wish it wasn’t a lie, papa.”

“Ah! so do I, Louis. But, such as the Herr Christ, if he had come at all on that Christmas Eve, it would have been to cure your poor mother. He would never have let her die, if he had been what they say he is.”

Louis made no answer. This reasoning was entirely beyond him; but he sat very still on his little stool, with his hands folded, and a lonely, lost look on his sweet face, that went to Metzerott’s heart.

“Come,” he said, with rough tenderness, “I’ll tell you something far better than to have your shoes filled by anybody. Be a little Christ-kind yourself, and carry gifts to other people.”

He had struck the right chord. Louis’ face beamed at once.

“I’ve got a quarter,” he said eagerly.

They were soon deep in the discussion of ways and means; for there were many to receive, and little to give with; but as the main object was to give Louis pleasure, and as he knew little of intrinsic values, he would be satisfied to give, however small the gift.

“As for the Miss Prices,” said Metzerott, “I’ve got a Christmas gift planned out for them, Louis; and to-morrow afternoon” (which was Sunday), “you ask Miss Polly to dress you in your best, and we’ll go and see about it.”

It proved to be worth seeing about.

The janitor of the Männerchor Club House, who was a saving man, and had, besides, good work and excellent pay in a factory in Micklegard, had resolved to try his luck on a sheep ranch in Texas, the owner of which had lately died, leaving a widow, who was willing to sell out land, stock, and fixtures on easy terms. The janitor had enough money to pay the first instalment, and his and his family’s expenses to Texas; but the widow wanted him to come on at once and take charge, as was, indeed, highly necessary for the welfare of the sheep, and he was bound to the Männerchor until June, their bargain being for a year at a time.

Now, the janitor’s salary was a small affair in itself; but the perquisites included the use of the ground floor of the club-house as a dwelling. This ground floor had originally been a store, of tolerable proportions, and had been simply partitioned off, when the building was bought by the Männerchor, to suit the new use to which it was to be put. There was a kitchen in the rear, small but alterable, and Metzerott had visions of alterations before his mind’s eye.

It will be remembered that at the Kaffee Klatsch, already described, supper was furnished to the convives at the modest price of fifteen cents a head. It had been experimentally proven that this rather more than covered expenses, even though the viands were ordered ready prepared from a baker, who of course made his own profit upon them. At the numerous concerts and balls which took place in the Hall, the supper cost usually a quarter, this sum, it was to be inferred, also leaving a margin for profit.

Now the duties of the janitor might be divided into two classes; he had to take care of the club-house, and keep it in order, and also attend to the fires and lights whenever it was used by the society, or other parties to whom it, or any part of it, might be rented for an evening. The first of these functions was usually performed by the janitor’s wife, while the second, being better suited to a masculine capacity, the janitor reserved for himself. It seemed, therefore, to Karl Metzerott’s logical mind, that, as these duties were already divided, it was not an absolute necessity that they who performed them should be man and wife; and his plan was to establish the Prices in the janitor’s quarters with the care of the house, and also as caterers to the club, by which, in addition to the business they had already got together, he thought they could make a very comfortable living.

As for the janitor’s other duties, Karl had a candidate for them in the person of Franz Schaefer, the pastor’s eldest son, now nearly seventeen. Franz, it appeared, was a musical genius, and was working hard at his violin, under the care of the Herr Direktor of the Männerchor. The pastor, however, had no spare dollars wherewith to further his son’s musical education; and, though the Direktor’s lessons might be given for the pure love of art, and perhaps of humanity, at least of such human beings as could detect the difference between E sharp and F natural, dollars were required to convey him to the land of his dreams, the summit of his aspirations,—the Royal Conservatory at Stuttgart.

Meanwhile, the denied wish was bearing good fruits in the economy and self-denial which were becoming a part of his nature. He was a clerk in a small drug store at a smaller salary, and the additional income that Karl’s plan would secure would set him considerably forward on the way to his promised land. Yet the plan was certainly an innovation; and perhaps Karl would not have been so successful in introducing it, but that the managers had a difficulty of their own, which the proposed arrangement met and satisfied. For houses in Micklegard were rented by the year; and it was hard, on the spur of the moment, to find a man, with a family, ready to give up his own domicile, and take the janitor’s place. And, on the other hand, they were large-minded men, who, having carved out their own fortunes, were reluctant to stand in the light of any one who was trying to rise in the world; so that Karl’s insistence, combined with the janitor’s eagerness to be off, finally carried the day, and, on the Sunday afternoon already referred to, he and Louis returned with a promise from the managers to give the new plan a trial, at all events.

“Let them have it until the end of the year, that is, till ‘moving day,’” the secretary had said; “then we can see how it works.”

“Work!” said Sally Price, “of course it’ll work! It shall work.”

Fortunately, the furniture of their new abode belonged to the house, having been put in for the departing janitor, who had taken the position as a fresh and furnitureless arrival from Germany; so there was nothing requiring an immediate outlay of capital.

Dr. Richards came in while they were discussing ways and means, and, after signifying his hearty approval of the plan in its main features, asked, “But about the balls, Miss Sally? Of course we know the society itself is composed of men who are as steady as old Time,” with a roguish glance at Metzerott, “but at the public balls, you know! for they do have beer!”

“I know that, and I don’t say I like it,” replied Sally; “but firstly, I ain’t going to sell it, I can’t control it, and therefore I ain’t responsible for it; secondly, they’ll be in the top of the house and us at the bottom most of the time; thirdly, if they go beyond the bounds of reason, we can call on the police; fourthly, ’tain’t no worse for us than it was for the janitor’s wife, a nice, modest woman as ever I see; and fifthly, folks that have been through what we have can put up with ’most anything!”

“After that array of argument I have no more to say,” said the doctor, laughing. “Well, Miss Sally, I must say that I think you will fill a long-felt want. You know the new pottery is to open the first of January, and quite a number of women would and could get work there if it were not for their duties at home. Now, if you could give them home fare at home prices, you see you would benefit yourselves and them too.”

“How about their children?” asked Polly.

“The big ones would be at school most of the time, and if you had a crèche for the babies”—

“There’s a vacant house next door to the hall,” said Metzerott.

“Ah! now we have plans indeed,” laughed the doctor, “and I wish I had time to talk them over with you; but I must perform my own special errand. Mr. Metzerott, my wife wants to borrow your little boy for our Christmas tree.” Karl’s eyes beamed with pride, yet he hesitated; but Louis’ cheeks were flushed, his eyes large and bright.

“Oh!” he said, “what is a Christmas tree?”

“Now ain’t that a shame! beggin’ your pardon, Mr. Metzerott,” said Miss Sally. “To think of the true Christian his mother was, and there’s her boy don’t know nothin’ of Christmas or Christmas trees.”

“Only, unfortunately for your argument, Miss Sally, both Christmas and its Tree are pagan originally. The first was the feast of Yule, kept by our Teutonic ancestors; the second is the representative of the great ash-tree Ygdrasil, symbolizing the heaven and earth. The eagle that soared above it, watching with sleepless eye all that passed below,”—

“Well, so He does,” said Miss Sally.

“Pagan or not,” said Metzerott, “I don’t want my boy to be a Christian.”

“I think you are wrong,” said the doctor thoughtfully; “not that I believe in Christianity any more than you, begging pardon of our friends here.”

“Christianity!” said Sally; “well, I ain’t sure I believe in that myself; but I do believe in Christ.”

“I congratulate you,” said the doctor. “It’s an innocent superstition, Metzerott; and, in a world of misery like this, why not let a child believe it, if it add to his happiness?”

“Because it ain’t true,” said the shoemaker sturdily.

“My good friend,” said Dr. Richards, “what is truth? Things are true relatively, never absolutely. I defy you to mention a single absolute truth.”

“The sun shines,” said Metzerott, whose Teutonic mind caught fire at the barest hint of metaphysics.

“How do you know it does?”

“Because I see it.”

“Prove that to a man born blind.”

“A man born blind is like a lunatic, or an idiot, as far as the sunlight is concerned,” said Karl, after some thought; “it can’t be proved to him. He can feel it though,” he added.

“Ah! concurrent testimony! But that is only an aggregation of single testimony, that is of relative truths, and merely amounts to a high probability, not to an absolute truth.”

“Well,” said Metzerott, “until you bring me a man with all his senses complete, and stand him in the sunshine before me, and have him say it ain’t bright and ain’t warm, I think it’s as near to an absolute truth as you are likely to come.”

“As near, yes, I grant that. But come, suppose I tell you—having all my senses complete—that to me the sunshine is dark and cold; what would you say then?”

“I know what I’d like to do,” said Karl Metzerott.

Now, to let the reader into a secret, the doctor had been all along amusedly aware of the similarity between this argument and certain others he had, in his student days, carried on. The reference to personal experience was therefore intentionally made, and he was much elated to find the shoemaker take his stand upon doing, instead of quibbling as to the exact meaning of shining and heat, or the state of mind a man must be in to experience these.

“Well, what would you do?” he asked.

“I’d wait for the Fourth of July,” said the shoemaker grimly; “and then I’d stand you out there, before my door, till you dropped with a sunstroke.”

“Without my hat?” asked the doctor.

Karl nodded, and the two men broke into a roar of laughter, which effectually settled the question of Louis and the Christmas Tree; for Karl was too pleased with his victory to be unrelenting.

“Now there is a man,” said the doctor to himself as he drove home, “who believes with all his heart that the sun shines. He proved it, too. If I could meet a man who believed like that in the Bible! But there is nothing corresponding to that sunstroke test of his in theology; and Christians know it. I—yes, really—I almost wish there were. Pooh! what a fool I am! Get up!” Which energetic reminder, addressed to his horse, so quickened that quadruped’s movements as to land the doctor speedily at his own door.

CHAPTER XI.
YGDRASIL.

It was easy for little Louis to accept the story of the Christ-child as a fairy tale; his life was so full of marvels this Christmas-tide. It was a drop of bitterness, of course, that George had not been asked to accompany him to Freddy’s Tree; but, to say the truth, George was not a particularly refined or attractive-looking child. He was large for his age, and heavily built; slow of speech and movement, with whitish hair, pale blue eyes, and features inchoate, of a modelling seemingly unfinished. There were not wanting signs and tokens that George might develop into a fine man; but at the moment he was unattractive, and Alice had not reached the point of choosing her guests on the broad ground of a common humanity. Indeed she was not prevented, either by common humanity or the further consideration of kinship, from reflecting with a secret glee, which she was careful not to reveal to her husband, that the presence of Louis, the shoemaker’s son, would only be condoned by the remainder of her guests because he was still—only a baby.

For Alice had bidden, not only the Garyulies and the Joblillies, but also the Grand Panjandrum himself with the little round button at top.

“Of course,” said Mrs. Henry Randolph, “you have a right to ask whom you please to your own house, and the child is only a baby, too young to presume, at present,” with awful emphasis; “but I am sorry to see you infected by the levelling tendencies of the age. Do you not know that even in heaven there are distinctions of rank?”

“I don’t know anything about it,” said Alice.

“Why, I’m sure we read of Thrones, Dominions, Principalities, and Powers.”

“And I suppose the Thrones decline to call on the Dominions, and the Principalities speak of the Powers as ‘that sort of people,’” said Alice. “Jennie, if I believed as you do, I’d—well, I’d rather be a heathen.”

“I hope you never may be a heathen, my dear”—

“Oh! come, you’re both right and both wrong. People who argue always are,” interposed the hearty, jovial voice of Mr. Randolph. He was a tall, fine-looking man, with clear brown eyes, remarkably keen, and rather lacking in tenderness, but of a certain restless quickness as they swept from one face to another. His features were regular, and his manner genial, while his laugh was equal to that immortal one of Scrooge’s nephew. Henry Randolph was a man of enormous popularity, and so trusted by his friends that even the knowledge that he had availed himself of the terms of his father’s will to keep back his sister’s portion did not shake their faith. He must have such good reasons, they said.

In truth, his reasons were of the very best. He was a man who speculated largely, and for the most part successfully; but, just at the time of Alice’s marriage, his losses had been so heavy that to resign the control of such a large amount would have been to him financial ruin, while, with it at his command, he could in a short time make good his loss. The temptation to refuse his consent to the marriage, and thus make the money legally his, was doubled by his real objection to Dr. Richards as an irreligious man, whose views upon social and political matters were also open to exception. He honestly wished his sister to accompany the family abroad, as, even if her marriage were not thereby definitely broken off, it would at least be deferred sufficiently long to serve his purpose financially.

Now, of all this Frederick Richards was perfectly aware; that is, he knew—as every one did—of the sudden collapse of the scheme which crippled Mr. Randolph, and swallowed whole innumerable smaller fortunes, and, through some murmur of the reeds such as betrayed King Midas’ secret, learned that Henry Randolph was a loser to a large amount. But to Alice the doctor said nothing; only, when the family returned to Micklegard, and the offer was made to let bygones be bygones, and restore to Alice the fortune her father had left her, Dr. Richards quietly refused.

Why?

It is hard to make his motives comprehensible to those who regard wealth as the supreme good.

The grandfather of Henry and Alice Randolph had made his fortune by means which, even in that day and generation, were regarded with scorn and horror. He was a slave-trader; but his only daughter, surrounded by luxury and educated at a Northern school, never suspected by what iniquitous means her wealth was acquired. To her, her father had always been the man he had become after his runaway marriage with the daughter of an aristocratic family, and his purchase of an estate in the far South,—handsome, jovial, and, to her, always tenderly indulgent. Her marriage to a representative of one of the “old families” strengthened her belief in herself as one of the chosen few for whose benefit the world was made and ordered; and her husband did not behold in the pearls and rubies upon his bride’s fair neck the blood and tears of suffering human beings, though somewhat distressfully aware of the not over-creditable manner in which his father-in-law had “made his money.” A convenient term this of “making money,” by the by. One might call it the great nineteenth-century petitio principii; for what a man makes might certainly be considered as his by all social and moral laws, while that which he merely acquires is suggestive of all sorts of confusing possibilities. Yet, if he makes, of what does he make, and whence came his material? Unless he makes also that, can he be said really to own the thing finally produced?

All which would have appeared to Henry Randolph very empty and unprofitable speculation,—mere sound, signifying nothing. Certainly, if one had accused him of insensibility to such suffering as he did not actually see, there are few of us who could afford to cast a stone at him; and he would have said of himself that to cases of real distress his heart and purse were always open; yet, to Frederick Richards’s mind, an invisible, semi-tangible hardness, under the manufacturer’s generous, cordial exterior, was always accounted for and excused by his grandfather’s occupation. That his own Alice had, as he firmly believed, escaped such a core to her loving heart (like the earth’s inmost hypothetical solid centre), was a freak of heredity for which he did not profess to be able to account. Yet, even Alice did not entirely concur in her husband’s opinion about the fortune, as was indeed most natural. She yielded to his feeling upon the matter; but her own was by no means what it would have been had the fruit of speculation been “lifted” bodily from a bank vault, or the slave-trader’s chattels been of pure Caucasian parentage. Also the money would have been in many ways a convenience, and, in case of “anything happening” to herself or the doctor, would have given her an ease of mind in regard to Freddy, which she was by no means able to derive from the thought of an overruling Providence.

What Henry Randolph thought of his brother-in-law, we had better not inquire; what he said was this,—

“Well, it’s his own affair; and if he can afford to despise such a sum of money, he is better off than I am,” which in a sense was true, since Dr. Richards had as much as he wanted.

The amount in question, however, was carefully “left” to Alice in her brother’s will, he being, according to his lights, a just man, whenever speculation would allow him; and, meanwhile, the two families were on studiously cordial terms, and were assembled on Christmas Eve to hail the lighting of the tree Ygdrasil.

It was Dr. Richards who told the story before the doors were opened, with Freddy in his arm-chair beside him, Frank and Harry Randolph on the floor at his feet, Louis in the place of honor on his knee, and Pinkie leaning forward from her father’s arms to listen. Pinkie, alias Rosalie, alias Pink Rosebud, was a wilful little maiden not three years old. She had the dark clear skin, brown eyes, and chestnut curls of the Randolphs, and bore indeed so strong a resemblance to Freddy, that her brilliant color and strong, active limbs sent many a pang to his parents’ hearts. But there was no envy in the pain, and the child was well-nigh as dear to both as if she had been their own.

The boys were comparatively very unimportant members of the Randolph household. Mrs. Randolph was what is called an excellent mother, and brought up her boys very strictly, and without petting or indulgence. Therefore they were best described collectively, at least in her presence, where there was little to distinguish them, except that Frank had taken a line of his own in being fair and blue-eyed. For the rest, both were painfully shy, silent, and awkward, though well-looking and well-dressed.

Little Louis, on the other hand, was perhaps too young to be shy, or perhaps had lived too freely and happily with his father to dread the criticism of his elders. At all events, as he sat on the doctor’s kind knee, and heard of the dragon Nidhug and the beautiful Nornas, and the golden and silver fruit of the great world-tree, there was nothing in his sparkling eyes, nothing in his sweet, childish face and neat, becoming dress, to indicate that the Nornas had been otherwise than kindly disposed at his birth.

Freddy and he had taken to each other at once.

“Can’t you walk one bit?”

“Haven’t you any mamma at all?” they had asked; and then the fair, rosy face and the pale, dark one had met and kissed each other.

After the gifts had been distributed and compared, there was singing of Christmas carols; for all the Randolphs had fine musical and artistic talent, and the boys forgot themselves and their mother’s presence more readily in music than in any other employment or amusement. Harry, indeed, was the leading soprano of the choir to which both belonged; and as all gathered around the piano, where Alice presided, they were a perfect picture of a happy, united, and religious family. And these are some of the words that they sang:—

“It came upon the midnight clear,

That glorious song of old,

From angels bending near the earth

To touch their harps of gold.

‘Peace on the earth, good-will to men,

From Heaven’s all-gracious King,’

The world in solemn stillness lay

To hear the angels sing.

But with the woes of sin and strife

The world has suffered long,

Beneath the angel strain have rolled

Two thousand years of wrong;

And man at war with man hears not

The love-song that they bring;

Oh! hush the noise, ye men of strife,

And hear the angels sing.

And ye, beneath life’s crushing load

Whose forms are bending low,

Who toil along the climbing way

With painful steps and slow,

Look now! for glad and golden hours

Come swiftly on the wing.

Oh, rest beside the weary road,

And hear the angels sing!

For lo! the days are hastening on,

By prophet bards foretold,

When with the ever-circling years

Comes round the age of gold;

When Peace shall over all the earth

Its ancient splendors fling,

And the whole world give back the song

Which now the angels sing.”

“What a tissue of rotten lies Christianity is!” thought Dr. Richards (who could not sing), leaning in his favorite attitude upon the mantel-piece, and listening to Henry Randolph’s fine bass, as it bore up the flute-like notes of his son. “There is Randolph, now, by a turn of his pen to-morrow will make ‘life’s crushing load’ heavier, maybe, to hundreds, and his own pockets heavier at the same time, and then will square accounts with his conscience by giving fifty dollars to some charity. Faugh!”

But at this moment an exclamation from Mrs. Randolph interrupted him. Louis and Pinkie, while the singing was under way, had got together into a corner, where they were discovered to be embracing one another in a very pretty baby fashion.

“But I tisses F’eddy,” observed Pinkie.

“It is very different,” remarked Mrs. Randolph. “Freddy is your cousin; but this little boy is no relation, and is besides in quite a different state of life.”

“Fut is state of life?” asked Pinkie. “Is it tause he tan yun ayound and F’eddy tant?”

“You’ll understand when you are older, dear,” said her mother; but whether Pinkie would have been satisfied with this answer was rendered forever doubtful by the announcement of the carriage.

“Good-by, child,” said the great lady, patting Louis’ golden head; “I wish you every good fortune that is proper for you to have. I was your mother’s best friend, if she had only known it, and would have saved her from the misery that afterwards, in the righteous Providence of God, overtook her.”

“What is misery?” asked little Louis, wistfully; “is it dying? My papa says she died ’cause we was poor, and the millionnaires wouldn’t ’vide. Are you a millionnaire, and would you ’vide?”

“Quite a promising young Socialist,” observed Mr. Randolph. “His father must be a dangerous man.”

But Louis did not hear him; he was listening eagerly to the lady.

“My dear, life and death are the gift of God. Your mother broke his laws, and he punished her”—

“Jennie! Jennie! don’t speak so to the child.”

“He should hear it from some one, Alice, and there is no one else likely to tell him. Heaven knows how kindly I feel towards poor Dora, but I dare not palliate her sin. ‘Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers’ are the words of Scripture, and poor Dora has paid the penalty for disregarding them; happier so than if she had seen her sin visited upon others.”

“Jennie, my dear Jennie, indeed the horses will catch their death; you forget how cold it is,” cried her husband, in an agony.

Doctor Richards saw them gravely to the door, then returned to the parlor, where Alice, with white lips, was restlessly putting chairs in place, and tidying books and ornaments; and Louis was standing where he had been left, with flushed face and clinched baby hands.

“If God killed my mamma,” said Louis, as the doctor entered, “then I hate God!”

“Hush, Louis,” said the doctor. “I must take you home, little boy. After all, Alice, it don’t do to mix—states of life.”

“It would, if people were human,” she said in a stifled voice.

“Ah!” he said; “but some people are only—millionnaires.”

“Is God a millionnaire?” asked Louis, as they drove away.

“Mrs. Randolph thinks so,” said the doctor; “but there’s no such person, Louis, it’s all a myth—that is, a fairy-tale.”

“I fink everyfing is a fairy-tale,” said Louis to himself with a sigh of relief; “and I’m glad about it, too; for it’s nice to be a Christ-child, but I don’t want to be God and kill people.”

When Dr. Richards returned he found Alice waiting for him in his study. Freddy, she said, had dropped asleep at once, after the evening’s fatigue.

“I am glad,” said the doctor; “I feared the excitement might keep him awake.”

“Yes,” she said, and then, suddenly, all the storm within her broke forth.

“Fred,” she cried, “help me! Is there a God? and is he so cruel? Would he punish my child for his mother’s sin?”

“My dear,” he said very gently, “why ask me? you know my opinion on these matters. And you have no very high esteem for Mrs. Randolph that her words should have such weight.”

“It is my own conscience!” she cried wildly. “Fred, I will tell you even though it will give you pain. It has rung in my ears night and day, ‘The sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children.’”

“Poor little girl,” he said tenderly, stroking her hair. “I hoped at least, Alice, that your religion made you happier.”

“My religion! mine! Oh! what is my religion! I feel like little Louis, Fred, that I hate”—

“Hush!” he said, “you will be sorry presently, when this excitement has passed away. Go to bed, like a good girl, and forget it all.”

“If I only could!” she sighed; “but I won’t pray, Fred; I can’t, to a God of punishment.”

He did not reply, except by a kiss, but, when the door had closed behind her, smiled a little bitterly.

“The mystery of pain,” he thought, “she said we should solve it together, hoping all the while to convert me, as I knew very well. And her solution is, a God of punishment!”

He turned up his reading-lamp and took up the latest medical treatise, which, though it recommended very harsh remedies, he did not decline to believe in.

Dr. Richards was a devotee of physical science, not a philologist, and it therefore did not occur to him that, etymologically, Punishment is much the same word as Purification.

CHAPTER XII.
“O YE ICE AND SNOW, BLESS YE THE LORD!”

Louis was awake bright and early on that Christmas morning, though, as applied to the atmospheric conditions of that particular day, “bright” is a singularly inappropriate adjective. The snow fell, not merely in flakes, but in clouds, and whether “the opposite side of the street” was “over the way,” or in Farther India, was purely a matter of faith; to the eye it was perfectly invisible.

“I don’t see how you are to get even as far as next door with those things,” said Metzerott, half in earnest, looking first at Louis, then at the blinding storm.

“Oh! but, papa, I must take George and Frau Anna their presents,” cried Louis in dismay.

“I don’t see why you must,” said his father. “Fritz will be in after his breakfast in a few minutes; he can take them.”

Louis looked very grave; he turned and took up his picture of the Christ-child. It was prettily framed, and the inscription, with its letters of red, blue, and gold, encircled it like a glory. Alice had used German letters and the German version.

“Ehre sei Gott in der Höhe, und Friede auf Erden, und den Menschen ein Wohlgefallen.”

“I could not be a Christ-kind if Fritz took them in,” he said.

Sally Price, who was busy over the frying-pan, while Polly stirred up the bread-sponge for the daily baking, which, as they had three families to provide for, might not be omitted, even on Christmas Day,—Sally Price dropped her iron spoon and held up her hands.

“Well, if I ever did!” she said. “Do you want to be a Christ-child, you angel?”

“Papa said I might, and Dr. Richards said, last night, the little boy in the picture looked like me, and I must try to be like him.”

“Law!” interposed Susan, “I thought the doctor was one of these infidels.”

“Infidel or not,” said Miss Sally, “he acts like a mighty good Christian.”

“But talkin’ like that, Sister Sally”—

“Talk! anybody can talk: and infidels often talk louder than Christians, about imitatin’ the Saviour, and such like. I s’pose they think nobody can keep ‘em up to it, if they don’t want to be kep’; while a member of the Church daren’t say much, for fear of folks sayin’ he has back-slid if he don’t live up to it.”

“Can’t I go, papa?” asked Louis, to whom the foregoing had been simply wasted breath.

“Of course, my son. I will carry you myself. We will show the good church members two more infidels who can keep up to their word without being kept.”

“It’s just awful to think of that child being brought up to believe like that,” said Polly as she covered her sponge and set it away to rise.

“Well, ’tis and ’taint, Polly,” answered Sally thoughtfully. “First place, he’s one of them children which of such is the kingdom of Heaven, and the good Lord will take care of his own; and, second, how better could he be raised than to want to be a little Christ-child, and ready to cry if he’s told he can’t?”

“But he thinks it is all a fairy-tale.”

“As it were,” said Sally. “What’s the difference between fairy-tale and history, Polly Price, to a baby five years old?”

“But when he gets older, Aunt Sally”—

“You take my advice, Polly, don’t you never cross a bridge till you come to it. If the good Lord don’t take care of him when he gets older, it’ll be time for you to interfere. Now, ketch hold and rench out Mrs. Rolf’s coffee-pot, will you? and I’ll pour the coffee into it. And if them pork chops ain’t done to a turn, I lose my guess. Cream gravy, too, for a treat for Christmas!”

“Last Christmas,” said Susan, “we had nothing to eat but the heel of a loaf, so hard we soaked it in water before we could bite into it.”

Sally stood for a moment with misty eyes; her volubility was gone on this subject. Then, as a sound of feet stamping off snow was heard at the door, she said with fervor, “Good Lord!” and fell to work upon the business in hand.

The next moment Metzerott hurried in with Louis on his shoulder, and followed by Fritz Rolf, a bright-faced boy of eight, with much of his mother’s briskness and “faculty.”

“I’ve cleared a path,” said Fritz; “and, if it lasts till I get back, I’ll get this breakfast in a-hootin’. But I tell you it’s snowing! Cover everything up warm, Aunt Sally, or Jacky Frost will stick his nose into it. Coffee, taters, pork, and hot biscuit! Bully! Ta! ta! see you later.”

“You’re a-goin’ to see me right now,” said Sally dryly. “S’pose you can open the front door yourself? Not with that tray in your hands, less’n you want to play the fall of Troy with it.”

As she opened the front door of the shop carefully, to exclude as much, or rather admit as little, as possible of the snowy air, those in the kitchen heard her exclaim, “Dr. Richards! if ever I seen a snow image! Your very eyelashes is white! Jump off and get warm, do!”

“I wasn’t at all sure of my whereabouts, Miss Sally,” answered the doctor’s voice, “until you spoke. But for my horse’s better judgment, I should have lost my way a dozen times—a hundred times—between this and Oak Grove.”

He had sprung from his horse as he spoke, and was shaking the snow from a blanket strapped military fashion behind his saddle, wherewith to cover the steaming animal.

“Oak Grove! the land! You ain’t been twelve miles in this storm?”

“Sent for at midnight,” said the doctor, shaking off vigorously the snow adhering to his person before he entered the shop. “Old patient, and a matter of life and death; so I had to go.”

“Well, I hope it turned out life, to pay you for your trouble.”

“I think it will be; she is safe for the present, at all events,” he said, very quietly, but with a smile from under his fur cap, which Sally never forgot.

Just at this moment a centaur-like figure loomed up through the snow, and halted at the sound of their voices.

“Is that you, doctor? They told me at your house to ride out along the road to Oak Grove, and I might meet you. What luck that I took this street!”

“Mr. Randolph! What has happened?”

“It’s my wife, doctor, my poor wife! I don’t know if she will be alive when we get there. I would not trust any one but myself to come for you in this storm.”

“A poor compliment to human nature,” thought Dr. Richards, “and a bitter commentary on the happiness of the rich. Metzerott, here, could find twenty to serve him in such a strait; but they are not hirelings.”

Perhaps twenty self-devoted friends was rather a large proportion for even a poor man; but Dr. Richards had been four hours on the road, and was nearly frozen, so his exaggeration may be forgiven, especially as he was on his horse before the reflection had passed through his mind.

At the first sound of Mr. Randolph’s voice, Sally had re-opened the shop door, which she had closed behind her, and called out, “Cup o’ coffee, Polly; be spry!” and as the doctor was about to ride away, there it was at his elbow, black, fragrant, and steaming hot. He swallowed it hastily, though he said afterwards that he could have dallied over every spoonful, like an old maid over her afternoon tea, so good it tasted. Then he disappeared with Henry Randolph into the storm.

The coffee would have been doubly relished had Dr. Richards known it would be his sole physical support and sustenance until noon of the same day. He had sent his tired horse home by a man-servant immediately upon reaching Mr. Randolph’s; but it was late in the afternoon before Alice, who had been watching anxiously, saw him walk wearily up the street towards the house. She had the door open before he reached it. The snow-storm had ceased, in consequence of a sudden fall in the temperature, and the brilliant sunshine on the white garment of Mother Earth, which the rude, irreverent wind was tossing in huge folds hither and thither, seemed to trouble the doctor’s eyes; for Alice noticed that he shaded them with his hand as he came towards her, and that they had a strained, dazed expression when he had entered the study, into which, with many loving words, she tenderly drew him.

“You walked home, dear! How imprudent! I sent John to ask if you wanted the buggy.”

“I sent him on to Dr. Harrison, who took my rounds for me to-day—happily, for I am fit for nothing now. One of Harrison’s horses is laid up, and the other is not able for double work such weather as this.”

“It is frightfully cold, and—oh, my darling! what a condition you are in!”

“Well,” said the doctor philosophically, “when a man has had snow drifting down the back of his neck and his boots, and settling everywhere about his person that it lawfully could settle, for about fourteen hours, and then it has melted and dried on him, he has a right to be in a condition.”

“I am afraid he will have a right to be ill if he keeps up that sort of thing,” said Alice. “But how is poor Jennie? Henry was in a terrible way about her this morning, but I have seen her in so many of these attacks”—

“Just so,” said the doctor; “poor soul, I suppose it was this one coming on that made her so—ah—captious—last night. I had very little hope of her from the moment I reached her bedside; but one comfort is that she had everything done for her that medical science could suggest. Harrison was with her in less than half an hour after she was taken, and stayed till I got there.”

“Is she—why, Fred, you talk as if—she can’t be dead!”

“She died about an hour ago, Alice. I would not let them send you any message, for, knowing how it would shock you, I wished to bring the news myself.”

Alice made no reply, but stood white and still, her hands hanging clasped before her, gazing into the fire. She could find no tear for the unloved sister-in-law, there was no grief at her heart for the loss of one so antagonistic; but the shock of her death was all the more sudden and terrible. For Alice was quite conscious of the crisis in her spiritual life that had been revealed to her on the preceding night, to which, as to all crises, physical and psychological, she had been long unconsciously drawing near.

In truth, Alice’s religion had never been to her nearly so real as the love she bore to her husband; there had been nothing between her and the Invisible, approaching or corresponding to the unfailing sympathy, the wordless comprehension and support, she found in him. Her love was real—her religion an unconscious make-believe; and reality had conquered.

Upon her realization that the creed she had learned had grown all unreal to her (that it had never been other than unreal she was not yet wise enough to know), Mrs. Randolph’s sudden passing away into the unknown came as a lightning stroke to her own house of life. Nothing else could have shown her so clearly the change in her own creed, as this death, so near herself, yet with no loving grief to hide the sharp surprise, the sudden vacancy. She was utterly silent; indeed, what was she to say? the usual platitudes had become so unutterably meaningless.

“She is better off,”—but Alice knew nothing whatever about it. “I hope she is happy!” “I trust she died at peace with God.” “May she rest in peace,”—none of these phrases would come to her lips. Only there rose before her mind a sudden sense of the dark unknown into which that soul had gone out; was it indeed to annihilation?

She turned suddenly, and put out both hands to her husband; her eyes had a frightened, lost look.

“Fred,” she cried, “what is death? is this life all? Shall we lose each other utterly one day, you and I? Is there nothing beyond the grave?”

He took her in his arms, it was all he could do for her in her sore need.

“I don’t know, my darling,” he said; “if there be, science has no power to find it. We must only love each other all the more while we live.”

“But why?” she cried, “what good will that do? it will only add to the misery of the one who is left behind. What is the use of love? or of living? unless we could die together.”

“There are others,” he said, “whom we can help. We may live for them.”

“And what claim have they upon us? If there is nothing beyond the grave, why not make the journey thither as short as possible, at least for the wretched? There is Freddy, for example, who has to suffer so much; if it is right to give him a little morphine to ease his pain for a while, why would it be wrong to give him enough to ease it forever?”

“Fortunately, there is no fear of your carrying that theory into practice,” he said, trying to smile.

“Because I am selfish,” she replied, “and cannot part with my child sooner than I must. But, Fred, there must be some truth somewhere; why should we not look for it together? There are books.”

“That is the hopeless part about it,” he answered; “there are so many books, and all so positive on their own side of the question. The theologian will prove to you just as clearly the whole scheme of salvation, as he calls it, as the scientist that nothing but matter has any real existence. For my part, there are two arguments which to me are perfectly conclusive. I ask nothing further. Whether there is or is not some sort of Blind Power in the universe, such as the great First Cause that some scientists are willing to acknowledge, does not interest me; but of the non-existence of an all-knowing, all-loving, personal God I am perfectly convinced for two reasons. First, the existence of evil in all its forms: sin, sorrow, suffering, and death. I would not allow such things in a world under my control, and a God who is less merciful than I is no God at all—for me.”

“I remember,” she said softly, “I have always known you thought like that.”

“But my second reason,” he continued, “is, if possible, even stronger. Here are you and I—yes, Alice, I too—who would give our very lives to believe in God and immortality. How are we to do it? To examine all the evidence, for and against, would take a lifetime of incessant study; and even those who have given this—beginning, too, with far more learning than we possess—have reached widely different conclusions. Well may the Book of Job say, ‘Canst thou by searching find out God?’ but the author, whoever he was, failed to draw the conclusion that, if there were a God he would not so have hidden himself.”

“I suppose you are right; at least, I don’t see how to answer you. But, surely, Fred, there is a great deal in the Bible about the truth being easy to find. All through the Old Testament it is the Jews who are turning away from God, and he who pleads with them to return; and in the New it says that God has hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them unto babes; and that only those who become as little children can enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

“That is, only those who crush down the intellect and believe blindly,” he said bitterly. “I can find no faith on those terms, Alice; let me meet annihilation, if I must, with my eyes open.”

For another moment she clung to him, with her face hidden; then she looked up very pale, but calm.

“I can live without faith,” she said quietly; “but I give you warning now, that without you and my child I could not and would not live. If death comes to me first,—well! if not”—

“You will live as long as there is any one for whom you can make the burden of life less heavy,” he said, “and so will I so far as we can control our own fate. It has been all the creed I could boast of for many years, Alice, to say, ‘I believe there are those whom I must live to help.’ I give it to you, now, in return for that of which I have robbed you; take it for what it is worth.”

“‘I believe there are those whom I must live to help,’” she repeated slowly. “It is a better creed than poor Jennie’s, Fred. ‘I believe there are those whom I must live to help!’” A sudden light came to her eyes, a smile to her lips. “I will begin with you!” she cried. “Why, how abominably selfish I am, to keep you here talking theology, when you are tired to death and half starved, I dare say.”

“My comforts are at least all ready for me,” he answered, smiling, with a glance at the tempting meal upon the table, and the coffee-pot, and little dish of fried oysters keeping hot before the fire.

“I thought you would rather have your lunch here,” she said. “Will you change your clothes first?”

“They seem to have pretty well dried on me,” he answered, “but I shall feel better for a hot bath; I am chilled to the very bone. And, meanwhile, there is some one else, Alice, love, who will need your care. Your brother asked to send poor little Pinkie here for a few days, and of course I had no wish to refuse. You will not mind the trouble, I know. The carriage will be here in a few moments.”

“Poor little Pinkie!” Alice’s eyes filled with the first tears that she had shed for Mrs. Randolph. “No, no, she will not be a trouble; but I must tell Freddy.” She paused, hesitated, and came back. “What shall I say to him, Fred? I can’t tell him that his aunt has gone to heaven. I don’t know that there is such a place.”

“She has gone into the unknown,” he replied; “but that would be nonsense to Freddy. I do not know what better name you can find, my dear, than just heaven. And if you don’t believe in golden harps and a glassy sea,—well, neither do you put much faith in the country above the bean-stalk; yet you tell Freddy about that.”

Alice went away, not quite satisfied, yet seeing no other course practically open to her than that suggested by her husband. It was a comfort that Freddy needed not now to be instructed in the nature or whereabouts of the Celestial Country. His small imagination took fire at once at the idea that Aunt Jennie had gone there; and he talked so eloquently to Pinkie of harps and crowns and angels with great white wings that, what with his conversation, and the pride and honor of paying a visit all alone, the little thing dried her tears for the mother whom she had been told she was never to see again, and was comforted until bedtime. But by bedtime Alice’s hands were so full as to promise her every opportunity to put her new creed into action.

For Dr. Richards’s hot bath had proved quite ineffectual to take the chill out of his bones. Alice found him sitting huddled over the fire, shivering with what he asserted to be only a nervous chill. He could not eat, but was insatiably thirsty, and said that his eyes bothered him; he supposed the snow had dazzled them. She tried vainly to persuade him to go to bed, until her persuasions were re-enforced by the positive orders of Dr. Harrison, who happened to come in. Before morning he was burning with fever, and tormented with all the worst agonies of inflammatory rheumatism.

Truly, it seemed that Mrs. Randolph had been right, and that an avenging God was punishing the faithless for their disloyalty to him. And yet how had this illness come? By spending and being spent for others; by rendering good for the evil rendered unto him. Has not Christ said, “Inasmuch as ye did it unto these, ye did it unto me”? Can he return evil for good?

Only a step of the way can our dull eyes see; and oftentimes that step is rough and hard, and to us looks very evil. But the evil shall pass away, the good remaineth.

It was strange what comfort and strength Alice found in her new creed, meagre though it were in comparison with the creeds of Christendom.

“I believe there are those whom I must live to help.”

Simple and practical, at least.

Logical? well, no! The human mind is, fortunately, not supremely logical; fortunately, I say, considering the readiness wherewith it adopts premises whose sole logical conclusion would be worse than the Spanish Inquisition, or the hanging of the Salem witches. Dr. Richards’s creed had come to his wife backed by the irresistible force of his life and character.

But neither of them reflected that in the verb, the little verb must, lay all they professed to deny,—an ordered universe and an ordering God.

CHAPTER XIII.
PROSIT NEUJAHR.

Sally Price had parted, in the storm and stress of life, with most of the superstitions wherewith she began the world; but there were two upon which she still retained a firm hold. One related to the new moon, which was to her a sign and token of good luck if seen over the right shoulder, or in full face in the open sky; while the left shoulder, or the obscuring branches of trees, brought, in some shape or other, misfortune. She always made a wish before she removed her eyes from the first sight of the new moon, holding up money, if her pocket happened to contain any of that commodity; but in this she had less faith, though she often referred to the fact that, the very last new moon before Polly’s famous swoon, she, Sally, had shown the moon a silver dime, and had wished for something to do whereby they could keep from starving.

The other superstition was that New Year’s Day foretold the year’s complexion, whether sad or joyful. Not its atmospheric condition. Sally looked upon the weather as a matter of too slight importance to be capable of foretelling anything; but sick or sorry; penniless, cold, and hungry; busy, happy, rich, and glad,—as New Year’s Day found her, so, in the main, would she be throughout the year.

They were foolish superstitions enough, I admit; yet Sally had infused something into them not utterly and ridiculously preposterous. For if, as she so humbly and faithfully believed, a Providence watches over the fall of the sparrow, why could not the same Providence foretell to her by the position of the moon and her own impecuniosity, or the reverse, and also by the events and circumstances of New Year’s Day, His gracious will concerning her for the ensuing month or year? It was quite worth His while to comfort her with a little gleam of hope when help was at hand, or to give her time to prepare her mind if misfortune were approaching. And not for the world would she have waited to get the moon over her right shoulder before she looked up, or in any other way have tampered with the omen. It was certainly not her doing that they were to take possession of their new quarters in Männerchor Hall on Sylvester-Abend itself, or that the New Year was to open so brightly with a concert and ball; but it was not strange, but touching, how persistently she strove that Susan should be perfectly well by the eventful day.

“If you wasn’t younger than me, Susan Price,” she said, “I’d say you was in your dotage. Tired! What have you done to tire you, I’d like to know?”

“That’s just where it is, Sally,” her sister would answer meekly, “I ain’t done nothin’; and yet I feel’s if I don’t want to lift a finger, not if the house was afire.”

“Well, don’t lift a finger, then,” Sally would reply. “There ain’t no call for you to; and when the house ketches fire, I’ll come and call you.”

The truth was that Susan, who had never possessed Sally’s vigor, either of mind or body, had been worn out by the bitterness of the struggle for existence, and had no strength to rally now that the worst of the battle was over. Dr. Richards had prescribed tonics—and paid for them himself—and had shaken his head gravely when he had left her.

“A total change of air, scene, and idea,” he said privately to Karl Metzerott, “might possibly put new life into her; but I doubt if she have sufficient elasticity of mind or body to make such a change possible. Set her down in the middle of Paris or London, and she would mentally carry Grind and Crushem and her sewing-machine along with her. She can’t shake them off as her sister has done.”

“Not till she moves to the graveyard,” said Karl grimly; “that’s the only change possible for her, I suppose.”

“And she will piously believe that an All-Merciful God has sent her there! Well, poor soul, it’s her only consolation; I would not rob her of it if I could.”

“Which you couldn’t, doctor. That’s the queerest part of all the lot of rubbish. Those two women believe that the All-Merciful God you speak of has watched over them all their lives, as firmly as I believe you have just written that prescription. I cannot understand it.”

“Nor I,” said the doctor; “but there are so many things one cannot understand,” he added, half to himself.

Did it ever occur to him now, as he lay upon his bed of pain, that an all-merciful, loving Father might be trying—even then—to teach him the lesson which Susan Price already had learned,—the lesson he could not understand?

The move on New Year’s Eve brightened up poor Susan so as to cheer Sally wonderfully. They were busy all day arranging their new domicile; for they meant to use the front portion of the former shop as a dining-room, where those whom they supplied might, if they preferred, take their meals instead of having them sent home. They had already had an application from a young German girl who taught in the public schools, and had neither friends nor relatives in the city, and from one or two clerks in the various stores. Metzerott and Frau Anna, for a while at least, would provide for the conveyance of their own meals, though the former had plans and designs upon a house that stood next to the Hall, whereof he spoke not until the time should be ripe.

Besides their “moving and unpacking,” as Sally jocularly called it,—for they had little to move but their three selves,—and the meals to prepare for their regular customers, there was the supper to be served at the ball that night, so it may be imagined that the Prices had their hands full. Franz Schaefer came around early “to help,” as he said, in reality to look at Polly in the intervals of his proper business of attending to the fire and lights. He was now a tall, somewhat gawky youth of nearly seventeen, with his father’s reddish hair standing up like a halo around an honest, open, but ugly countenance, which, lacking the pastor’s nervous quickness, wore for its most constant expression a stolid impassibility. Only with his violin upon his shoulder did his face light up or change; but, with the soft touch of the electric wood against his cheek, the eyes grew soft and humid, a half-smile curved the corners of the rather heavy lips, and a slight color crept into his usually pale face.

Polly, who was three years his senior, laughed at the lad’s devotion, and alternately petted and scolded him, like a mother. Franz submitted; but he had entirely made up his mind as to his own course.

“I mean to marry her if she will wait until I come back from Germany,” he said to himself. “If she marries any one else, I will kill him like a mosquito.”

Certainly, no one suspected such bloodthirsty designs in the quiet youth who lounged awkwardly against the doorpost as the members of the Männerchor climbed, laughing and talking, up the steep winding staircase that led to the Concert Hall, most of them pausing to chaff “Janitor Franz,” as they went by. Franz was not good at chaff; he never could think of anything clever enough to say until the occasion was past. Then he thought of a plenty, he said. Sometimes he confided some of the things he ought to have said to Polly, who laughed at him undisguisedly.

“If you were a soldier, Franz,” she said, “you’d go after your ammunition just as the battle was beginning.”

As usual Franz only grinned in reply, but later in the evening he suddenly exclaimed aloud, “Not if somebody I can imagine were on the other side.”

Several persons standing by looked at him in surprise; but Franz did not deign to explain that the imaginary somebody was Polly’s possible husband.

In truth Franz was not stupid, though the connection between his mind and tongue did not act as rapidly as might have been wished. But give him time and he could think as clearly and plan as well as anybody. And thus on this Sylvester Night it was beautiful to see how evident he made it to all men that Polly belonged to him. He surrounded her with his own family, of whom Tina, recently married, was his confidant, and highly approved his choice. The pastor was amused, but unconcerned, as at something belonging to a distant and improbable future; and Gretchen, who still held fast her own immunity from accident, was mildly sarcastic and coolly critical. Polly did not rebel; she liked the pastor’s family, even to Lottie, now grown stouter than ever, and apt to drop asleep on very small provocation. Tina and Polly were fast friends; and, as for Franz himself, his devotion was too absurd for any sensible person to consider seriously.

It was the last hour of the old year, and “Damenregiment” was solemnly proclaimed by the Herr President. The ladies, he said, who for all the year had been under the rule of their lords and masters, for that one hour, were to have full sway. They were to ask, and their partners were not to refuse, to tread a measure devised for the total overthrow of the nobler sex. In the “Männerchor Cotillon” the dancers stood in a circle as in “Tucker.” In the midst stood a table and chair, the former bearing favors and a nightcap. Up to this table each conqueror waltzed her chosen victim, and, either decorated him with a favor—in which case he waltzed her away again,—or—put the nightcap on his head. In which case, he naturally remained in his place until released by some more gracious Tänzerin.

Great was the fun and loud the laughter; many an old score was paid off by a specially unbecoming arrangement of that yellow tissue-paper cap, with its full white frill and long floating strings; many a shy old bachelor was hunted out from his refuge in the gallery, and made, as he keenly felt, a scorn and hissing in the sight of all men. Polly thoroughly enjoyed it. She chose the prettiest favor she could find for Karl Metzerott, who was her first partner, and who, simply to tease Franz, improved his opportunity to keep her to himself so long that not a few gossiping eyebrows went up in consequence. Polly, however, being filled with compassion at the sight of Franz chained, Andromeda-like, to that fatal chair (though when duly capped he rather resembled Medusa), raised him to the seventh heaven by releasing him.

“It must be nearly twelve,” she said. “Ought not you to look after that dynamite bomb, or whatever it is, that is to explode the New Year in upon us?”

Franz grinned; this time his answer was all ready.

“I’ve got nothing to do with that,” he said, “that’s the president’s business. They would not trust me, anyway; I’m too young. I know who I’m going to wish a happy New Year to, Miss Polly, first of anybody here.”

“That’s good,” she said coolly, “who is it?”

“Ah! I won’t tell, or she’d be running off,” said the lad; “but if any fellow cuts in ahead of me, I’ll throw him downstairs. Miss Polly, if I was to kiss her hand, you know, would she be mad at me?”

“Yes, I think she would,” rejoined Polly. “There are my aunts, who have come up for the New Year wishes; it must be near twelve.”

Sally and Susan had been busy in the kitchen over the supper, all the evening, but at this moment appeared in the doorway, to see the Old Year out and the New Year in, smiling and radiant in the new dresses which Frau Anna had made for them.

“Aunt Susan looks so very pale,” said Polly uneasily, “I am afraid she has been working too hard. I ought to have stayed and helped them, but they were both so kind, and the music sounded so bright and cheering,”—

“There was so little to do,” said Franz, “the supper was mostly ready”—

At this moment something—perhaps a dynamite bomb, as Polly had said,—exploded on the stage, and Polly found her hand suddenly seized and kissed.

“Prosit Neujahr! Miss Polly,” cried Franz; “I hope you may be as happy as I would like to make you.”

Polly had no time to be angry; indeed she was half stunned by the “Prosits” and handshakings going on all around her. But through it all there rang all at once a shrill, grief-stricken cry.

“Not now, Susan! Oh! not now, when we were goin’ to be so happy!”

For, amid the laughter and good wishes all around her, Susan Price had suddenly and quietly fainted away.

CHAPTER XIV.
LEARNING AND TEACHING.

From the swoon into which she had fallen on that New Year’s Night Susan Price was slow in reviving. But it was nothing, she said, when she had at last regained consciousness; she was only stupid and tired. So the ball went on undisturbed, the dancers being only too ready to accept any theory that would not mar their enjoyment. But Sally went about her work with dry eyes and set lips. It was all over, she thought, as she rapidly served the ice-cream; Susan was struck with death, she would never live through a year that had opened so.

“An’ after all we’ve went through together,” thought Sally, “to die jest as things is growin’ brighter. Well, the Lord knows best, and she’ll be took care of up there; but how I am to live without her I s’pose He knows, but it’s more than I do. You, Polly,” she added aloud, “you ain’t got no call to slice that cake so thin. Give the folks the worth of their money, do. And take a sharper knife to it, for a good half goes in crumbs, and I despise crumbs. They are jest clear sinful waste, specially cake crumbs, that can’t even be fed to the birds.”

“I’ll eat ‘em,” said Heinz Schaefer, who had, with several other boys of his age, volunteered as waiters for the new caterer.

“You carry that coffee straight, without spillin’ none of it, and we’ll talk about cake afterwards,” answered Sally severely. “Polly,” she continued, “seems to me we’ll come out pretty fair on expenses to-night; and by the next ball we’ll be makin’ our own ices, and do even better. Run now for just a minute and see how your Aunt Susan is, that’s a good girl. Laws! what a thing Providence is, to be sure. To think Dr. Richards should be so ill just at this minute! But there!” she thought within herself a moment later, “what call have I got to be talkin’ about Providence like that? The angel Gabriel himself couldn’t do her no good ef she’s struck with death.”

A day or two after this, Susan was sitting alone in the bedroom which was shared by all three. It was scarcely a luxurious apartment; but there was a rag carpet on the floor and a fire in the little grate, which was more like luxury than any of Susan’s surroundings for many years. There were patchwork cushions, too, lining the great wooden rocker that gave so grateful a support to her tired frame; her calico dress was clean and whole, and a soft, warm shawl was folded round the thin shoulders. Yet there was no sign of pleasure in Susan’s face, no look of basking in creature comforts; she was very white and worn, and from time to time a large tear escaped from under her closed eyelid, and wandered down over the withered cheek.

A little hand fumbling at the lock, the sound of small feet upon the floor, made her brush away these tokens of inward disturbance, and turn with a smile to greet Louis and his friend and accompanying shadow, George, the uninteresting.

“Aunt Susan, we’ve come to amuse you a little,” said Louis half timidly; for there was something beyond his comprehension in the smile on that white face.

“I’ve come to jest that,” said Susan quietly, without a shadow of bitterness; “not as I ever was much to brag about, specially compared with Sally; but now I ain’t even fit to amuse a child, he has to amuse me.”

Louis seated himself cross-legged on the floor at her feet, George imitating him to the letter, and looked up gravely into her face. “My papa says,” he continued, “that he hopes you are better, and if you could take a little walk it would do you good.”

“Nothin’ won’t ever do me no good no more, Louis, not in this world.”

“And Aunt Sally says,” continued the boy, so anxious for the accurate transmission of his message as to pass by this remark, “Aunt Sally says, if you feel strong enough, you could take a walk with me and George, and if you don’t, we can ’muse you a little bit.”

“Bless your sweet eyes,” said Susan, “I ain’t strong enough hardly to walk across this room, Louis, let alone goin’ out o’ doors.”

Louis pondered over this for a moment pitifully; it was quite incomprehensible to his childish vigor. Then, his mind reverting to his own concerns, he brought out, as most of us do, the subject which lay uppermost.

“I want to ask you, Aunt Susan, how do boys learn to read?”

Susan laughed. “Same way girls do, I s’pose,” she said. “I learned out of a spellin’-book. But you must learn your letters first.”

“What’s letters?” asked the child.

Susan lifted the large Bible that lay on the table beside her,—a treasure inherited from their mother, to which the sisters had clung all through their days of destitution. It opened of itself at the eleventh chapter of Isaiah.

“That’s a letter,” said Susan, pointing to the large capital that headed the chapter; “that’s A, and A stands for Anna.”

“Does it, really?” cried Louis, while George grinned delightedly, and pressed nearer to see for himself. “There’s another A,” he went on, glancing down the page, “and another, and—oh, lots of ‘em! What stands for George?”

It took some little while to find a G, and L, for Louis was even more difficult; but by dinner-time the child had learned the initials of most of his acquaintances, and Susan’s eyes were bright with pleasurable excitement.

“Why do you want to read so bad, all of a sudden, Louis?” she asked, during the course of the lesson.

“’Cause Freddy’s papa is sick, and his mamma ain’t got time to read ’bout the Christ-child to him,” said Louis. “And if I learned, then I could, you know, Aunt Susan.”

“I guess Freddy’s papa will be either well or dead before you learn to read,” said Susan thoughtfully; “but you can try, anyway. When was you there?”

“Yesterday. I’m goin’ again after dinner. Mrs. Richards says I ’muse Freddy and Miss Pinkie; and I ’muse you, too, don’t I, Aunt Susan?”

“You’re a real little Christ-child yourself,” said Susan fondly.

Louis’ little face beamed with quick pleasure. “I didn’t know I could be a Christ-child ’cept at Christmas,” he said.

“You can be a Christ-child any time, all the year round,” replied Susan earnestly; “whenever you make any one good or happy, Louis, that is being like Him.”

“Did He make everybody happy?” asked the child rather doubtfully, perhaps remembering the gaunt forms in his Christmas picture, for he added, “Some of their bones stick out awful.”

“Well, He ain’t never promised to make ‘em fat,” returned Susan dryly; “but as for happy—! Louis, I’ve been through a lot, and I know what I’m talkin’ about. Them that come to Him, He don’t never cast out, you remember that. He ain’t never forsook me yet, and He ain’t a-goin’ to. Ef I begin to doubt Him and fret about not bein’ of no use no more, then He sends an angel to visit with me; that’s what He does, Louis!”

“Does He really?” said George, who had listened open-mouthed to all this conversation.

“Well,” said Susan, laughing, though with the tears in her eyes, “p’raps I’d oughter said two angels; but, to tell you the truth, George, I forgot you slick and clean.”

Männerchor Hall stood about midway between Metzerott’s shop and the residence of Dr. Richards, which stood, as Mrs. Randolph had often regretfully remarked, in an old and unfashionable quarter of the town. Louis was therefore able to find his way thither alone; for, though he was but five and a half, children younger than he were left much more to their own guidance, all around him. In fact, one neighbor of the shoemaker’s, whose six-year-old daughter was nightly obliged to fetch him home from the corner saloon, had long ago prophesied that Metzerott would ruin that boy by over-care, and advised the inculcation of habits of self-reliance.

But there was no lack of self-reliance about the small figure in the fur cap and brown overcoat, with mittened hands rammed tightly into the pockets of the same, that stepped along so carefully over the icy sidewalks, and watched so keenly at the crowded crossings for a chance to get over. There was, indeed, even a tinge of self-importance; was he not the bearer of knowledge? For the idea had come to Louis that he could “’vide” the letters he had learned with Freddy, and that they could learn to read “togevver;” which plan was found to result admirably, assisted by a box of alphabetical blocks.

Learning to read was at least a quiet amusement; and Louis’ visits were found to conduce so greatly to the tranquillity necessary to Dr. Richards’s comfort as to be promoted not only by Alice, but even by Pinkie’s nurse, who had at first been inclined to consider the shoemaker’s son no fit playmate for her little charge. Yet Louis could be noisy enough with George; and was wont to storm in and out of his father’s shop in a way to rejoice his father’s heart, it was only that with Freddy, who was a cripple, and Pinkie, who was a girl, another side of his nature came into play. Besides, all of Freddy’s noisy toys had been put away,—drum, pop-gun, and toy locomotive stood together on a high shelf, with Pinkie’s beloved wheel (or feel, as she called it) leaning against the closet wall beneath it; its sharply, irritatingly, jingling little bell silent perforce. But there remained innumerable books, and the blocks before named, which were probably somewhat amazed at finding themselves considered from a literary rather than an architectural standpoint.

Among the books was a picture Bible for children, which was not without its influence upon the young minds that studied it; for, though the letter-press had only begun to wear a faint look of familiarity to their young eyes, the pictures were numerous; and most of the stories had been told or read to Freddy until he knew them by heart. Pinkie had never in her life been so good, the nurse said, as when she listened with all her eager little ears to the story of the Flood, illustrated by the toy Noah’s Ark; or personated Isaac to Louis’ sacrificial Abraham, while Freddy, aided by a pair of immense paper horns, represented the ram caught in the bushes. During Louis’ intervening absences, Pinkie was her spoilt, mischievous little self; and disputes between her and Freddy, whose spinal column predisposed him to fretfulness, and who was as unaccustomed to contradiction as Pinkie herself, were distressingly frequent; but when one o’clock brought Louis, smiling radiantly, and full of some new idea that he had picked up, or new word that he had learned from Susan Price or a street sign, and was eager to teach the others by means of Freddy’s blocks,—Pinkie’s naughtiness and wilfulness vanished like a dream, and she became the most docile little maid that ever invited the judgment of Solomon, or was slain, as Jephthah’s daughter, among the hills of Palestine.

Their favorite characters, however, were taken from the New Testament; and though nurse—a devout Romanist—averred that “it gave her a turn, to see thim childer playin’ at bein’ the blessed Mother and the dear Saviour,” she was too learned in the ways of children, and of Pinkie in particular, to risk an interruption, when Dr. Richards lay asleep and the house was holding its breath for fear of disturbing him. So the precedent was established, and after that she was powerless to interfere, except at the expense of a general mutiny.

The rôle of the Christ was always taken by Louis; why, it seemed difficult to explain, for he was never unwilling to resign to the others any character to which they specially inclined. Freddy might be Elijah, fed with cake crumbs by wingless ravens at an imaginary Cherith, or King Solomon to Pinkie’s Queen of Sheba; or Pinkie herself might choose any impersonation she liked, regardless of sex and size; from Adam or Noah, to Goliath of Gath. But, without argument or controversy, the part of the Christ invariably fell to Louis. Perhaps he cared more for it than they did; perhaps they felt it was less alien to his nature than to theirs. For indeed the thought of “being a little Christ-child himself,” which his father had half carelessly planted, and Susan Price had watered, had—whether by a Great First Cause or Fors Fortuna—been given increase.

“Would the Christ-child do that?” he sometimes asked. “How did the Christ-child do?” he would say. And in his mornings spent with George, amusing Aunt Susan, or his afternoons passed in keeping Freddy and Pinkie good and quiet, he was living out that holy Life which he had been taught to believe only a fairy-tale.

As Dr. Richards slowly grew better, and again became alive to sensations other than purely and painfully subjective,—he found some amusement in watching these amateur miracle-plays. One afternoon they were in the full tide of a new story, which he could hardly at first make out, as he lay on his couch, observing them through the open door.

Freddy sat alone in the room impersonating ten lepers, so there was little wonder his father failed to take in the situation. Then the door opened, and Louis entered, followed by all the disciples in the person of Pinkie. A blue broché shawl, belonging to nurse, with a bright gold and red border, was draped about him in a very tolerable imitation of the pictures; his head was bare, and his childish face upturned with so sweet and solemn a look that one might almost have fancied him indeed on his way to Jerusalem and Calvary. Then came the cry from Freddy, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”

Louis stopped, and turned slowly. His whole countenance changed and softened into tenderness and pity; he stretched out one hand with a gesture full of authority.

“Go, show yourselves to the priests,” he said.

“Now dey’s gone,” cried Pinkie, who seemed inclined to add the part of Greek chorus to her other characters, “now, dey’s all well adain, and here turns one of ‘em, yunnin, yunnin fasht. Now, Feddy, you tan dowify Dod.”

But just as Freddy began obediently to clap his hands and shout, “Glory, glory,” Louis, who had stood all the while motionless, regarding him fixedly, suddenly laid that small outstretched hand on the arm of his little friend.

“Stop, Freddy,” he said, still with the same tone of strange authority, “stop, I’m going to cure you.”

Freddy looked up surprised and half frightened. Alice rose from her seat by the window, and the nurse quietly began to put by her sewing as though to be ready for any emergency, for there was something in the child’s manner that showed him to be in awful earnest.

“Freddy, arise and walk!”

The childish tones rang through the room like the notes of a silver flute; there was a pause; Dr. Richards in the next room raised himself on his elbow to see the better, Alice made one step forward, and the nurse stood quietly watching, all unconscious of the tears that followed each other silently down her cheeks. Even Pinkie was hushed with expectation, and I think no one would have been at that moment surprised if the command had been obeyed. But, alas! the two little hands upon the arms of Freddy’s chair, the helpless feet concealed by the gay, embroidered skirt, were powerless to raise or to sustain even so slight a weight as that small figure. There was an effort, a struggle perceptible but vain; then Freddy’s voice cried out, “O Louis, I can’t, I can’t! my legs aren’t strong enough,” and broke into bitter, childish weeping.

The look of authority and confident power on Louis’ face changed to incredulity, doubt, and blank hopelessness. His hand fell from Freddy’s shoulder—Freddy, who was already in his mother’s arms—and he began to unfasten the shawl draped about him.

“It’s no use,” he said quietly, his manner recalling vividly to the looker-on in the next room Karl Metzerott’s stern, self-contained grief at the bedside of his dying wife,—“It’s no use; I don’t want to be the Christ any more!”

“Den I’ll be bad,” cried Pinkie; and, suddenly lapsing into one of her naughtiest fits, she threw herself on the floor and screamed in a manner that Louis’ composure was not proof against; the tears rose to his eyes and his breast heaved.

“I think I’ll go home now,” he said with quivering lip.

“No, no, don’t ye now, alanna,” said nurse hastily, in the intervals of picking up Pinkie—who made herself very stiff indeed—from the floor, and assuring her that she should be sent up to the nursery for the rest of the day, if she cried and made her poor uncle ill again. “Don’t go yet, Louis astore, Miss Pinkie’ll never be good without ye. Stop yer cryin’, all of yez, and I’ll tell ye somethin’ now.”

“A story?” asked Pinkie, breaking off a roar in the middle, and speaking in a composed and cheerful tone.

“Not a story, darlint, but”—as Pinkie picked up her roar at the very point where she had dropped it, “somethin’ nice, very nice, that’ll make Louis play with you and Master Freddy again.”

Freddy, at this, raised his head from his mother’s shoulder, Louis dried his eyes and drew near, and Pinkie condescended to put aside her intended “badness,” pending further developments.

Alice stood erect, very white and still.

“I will leave them all to you, nurse,” she said, “though it is bitter to feel that any one but his mother can comfort my boy. But if you can make them happy again, do so; I cannot; one must say what one really believes to children, and I do not believe that—any one—could have cured Freddy any better than Louis did.”

“God help you, ma’am,” said nurse fervently. Then Alice went away into the next room, sat down beside her husband, and laid her hand in his.

“You may be wrong about one thing, dearest,” he said softly. “Harrison was talking to me to-day about a new kind of treatment he wants to try for Freddy. It won’t cure him, that is impossible; but it may help him very materially. Harrison hopes more from it than I do; but if he is even able to get about with crutches, that will be something.”

“Will it be painful?” she asked, mother-like.

“A little, perhaps; but you can bear even to see him suffer, can you not, if it will add to his happiness in the end?”

“If, yes; but hush, what is nurse telling them?”

“Sure, ye don’t think the blessed Saviour came on earth just to cure sick people, do ye?” asked the mellow Irish voice. “He did heal the lepers, of course, and He raised the dead; but what He come for, you childer, was to make people good. It was just last Sunday our praste was tellin’ us that pain is nothing at all at all, and no more is death, compared with sin. You childer can’t understand that yet; but ye know the blessed Jesus died, don’t ye? and in such pain—why, look here!” and she pulled a crucifix out of her bosom, and showed it to the children, explaining and painting so vividly the pain of such a death that Freddy was ready to cry again, and Pinkie to do battle with His murderers.

“So ye see,” continued nurse, “that He suffered pain and death too, but not sin. Nobody ever heard of His doing wrong; and, as Father McClosky said, that shows which He thought the worst of. So, though you childer can’t expect to do miracles like He did, you can help each other to be good, and that’s what He likes much better.”

“If I was dare,” said Pinkie, “I’d made yose bad mens yun avay fasht, an’ pull yose nails out and say, ‘Tum down, dear Saviour!’”

“Sure, there was onct a little bird thought that same,” said nurse, availing herself of the opening to change the subject of conversation; and she proceeded to tell them the legend of the Redbreast, to their great delight.

“But he didn’t get the nail out,” said Louis rather mournfully, as the story ended.

“No; but, sure, he got the Saviour’s blood on his breast, and wears it there to this day, and that was honor enough for him.”

“Want to shee blood on his bweast,” said Pinkie; so nurse put down her sewing, and looked for a picture of a robin, and, by the time she had succeeded, the children were eager for play again, and Freddy’s wheeled chair became the Ark of the Covenant, with Pinkie dancing before it as King David, while Louis and his mouth-harp represented all the priests and Levites.

That same night Susan Price quietly and peacefully faded out of life. She had borne sorrow and pain enough; had she helped any one to be good? It would have been hard to judge of so blank and colorless a life. She had never seemed other than a pale reflection of her sister, even her love and loyalty to whom had been too instinctive and shadow-like to appear other than a thing of course.

“I’ll try to live without you, Sue,” said Sally, looking down on the cold, placid face. “I’ll try to live without you, and, since the Lord has taken you, I s’pose I kin,—now! But when we was poor and starvin’, Sue, I couldn’t of, I know I couldn’t; and it’ll be a long day, sister, until I see you again.”

And this was Susan Price’s sole funeral oration.

BOOK II.
ALTRUISM.

CHAPTER I.
AFTER TWELVE YEARS.

It was a brilliant day towards the lamb-like end of a March, whose beginning had been of a particularly leonine character. The leaf-buds upon the trees showed faint lines of green along their smooth circumference of delicate brown; the dry, dead grass of winter had been replaced by young blades of a tender verdure; yet the air was cool and pleasantly crisp, though the sunshine, as every one said, was warm enough for June.

At the South Micklegard railroad station, a short, jolly-looking gentleman seemed to differ from the prevailing opinion as to the heat; for his hands were in his pockets, and his overcoat buttoned closely over his stout form up to the smooth-shaven chin.

Up and down the sunniest part of the platform he walked briskly, with at every turn so impatient a glance along the track that, by and by, a porter, wheeling up his empty truck to be in readiness for the coming freight, paused to ask him a question.

“It’s not leaving us you are, Father?”

“No, no, Denny, not so bad as that; only waiting for a friend. She’s late to-day?” with a motion of his head towards the point whence the train should have appeared half an hour before. Denny, however, was in no danger of misunderstanding the figuratively feminine pronoun.

“Av it was the furst toime, she’d’ a ’slipped the track,” he said dryly. “That ould tin o’clock niver gits in till noon.”

“Then ye should have telephoned me to that intent,” replied the father, with a twinkle in his eye. “Didn’t I leave me sermon in the midst to hurry down here? And if I miss me dinner to finish it, ’twill be the worse for you sinners, I promise ye, Denny.”

Denny grinned, and pulled his forelock; but at this moment a distant whistle announced the approach of the train, and he wheeled his truck leisurely away, while Father McClosky restored his handkerchief to his pocket, and drew his plump figure into a posture of erect expectancy.

The Rev. Bryan McClosky had been for fifteen years in charge of St. Clement’s Church, a dingy and unbeautiful brick structure on an obscure street in South Micklegard. His congregation were chiefly poor working-people; and the few outsiders who recognized the rare qualities of head and heart which were joined to his unimpressive and somewhat undignified exterior, were disposed to wonder that the authorities of his Church, with all their well-known tact and skill at making the most of their material, should have kept such a man so long in such an obscure position.

Perhaps, however, the authorities, as usual, knew their own business best. Bryan McClosky was by birth one of the people among whom he labored. His father had been an Irish peasant, and Bryan’s first memories of home were of a cabin wherein pigs and chickens were as much members of the household as himself. Natural talent and education had done much to raise him above the level of his former associates, but he was still one of them at heart. By his present congregation he was simply idolized; and, though they stood in no manner of awe of him, the real reverence which they gave and he fully deserved was not at all impaired by his readiness to laugh and joke on all but very improper occasions.

Into his religious opinions there would seem to be no need to inquire, since they were to be found in the doctrinal formulas of a Church which tolerates no private judgment of such matters. Nevertheless, there had not been wanting, in high ecclesiastical quarters, rumors as to the potential heterodoxy of Father McClosky,—a heterodoxy which showed itself in just a little over-charity towards heretics, and a too great readiness to unite with them in schemes for the public welfare. He had even been admonished once or twice—or, if that word be too harsh, gently interrogated—on these matters, but in every case was able to prove himself so clearly right, and within the letter of the law, that the only results were, on the part of the authorities, a conviction that while it was best to keep him where he would do least harm, it would also be wisest not to drive him to extremities; and on his side, a habit of good-humored denunciation of his Protestant friends as heretics, and destined to a considerable amount of future discomfort, which, accompanied by a twist of his mouth and a twinkle of his black eyes, was, as he often remarked, “perfectly orthodox, and hurt nobody.”

The true key to his character was his loyalty to the Church which had fed, clothed, and educated him. She might not be as infallible as she thought herself; it might even be that she had, historically and doctrinally, made mistakes; but if he admitted these to himself, he was too true a son to allow any one else to guess that he did so. Moreover, there was no one in the world for whose comfort and well-being he cared less than for those of the Rev. Bryan McClosky, so he was not likely to resent the lack of ecclesiastical preferment; and as his gravest doubts were whether he should himself be more at home in any other church than that of his birth, or whether he possessed the personal infallibility necessary to start a church of his own, he asked nothing better than to devote his life to the people whose coarse, ignorant, sometimes stupid and brutalized faces were upturned so eagerly Sunday after Sunday to his pulpit, or bowed beneath his benediction from the altar.

The person for whom he had waited so long at last stepped upon the platform, and was greeted as a “thief of the world” and a “blazin’ heretic,” to the grinning amusement of Denny and one or two others. Ernest Clare took the matter very quietly, though there was a gleam in his blue eyes and a certain compression about his mouth, that seemed to show that quietude was rather acquired than innate to a man of his character.

He was considerably above the medium height, and magnificently proportioned; indeed, his muscular development was usually the first item of his personal appearance to attract attention. It was only a second glance, with most people, that noted the calm, pure face, with its smooth, white brow, clear eyes, and firm, steadfast lips. There was something rather wonderful about those eyes, under the straight, dark brows and long, black lashes; they were so soft and utterly still in their calm, blue depths, while over their surface glanced lights of fun or anger, or darkened clouds of sorrow. Some one who loved him had once said that Ernest Clare had two souls,—one which bore the burden and heat of the day, and one which abode ever upon the spiritual mountain-tops, rapt in the contemplation of things ineffable,—and that these two souls were mirrored in his eyes. When she said it, it had been true only at times; now the two souls were one.

“It’s but a step to ‘Prices,’” said Father McClosky; “will ye walk, or ride?”

“Of course, after that delicate hint, I will walk,” replied Mr. Clare, with a smile of amusement.

“Sure, I only meant shank’s mare for ye to ride on, and carry your valise at that. Oh, ye heretic! if you did but know how glad I am to see you, and have a chance to convert ye.”

“I believe that, Bryan; part of it, anyway. Could you get a room for me at this famous co-operative place of yours?”

“Two of them,—bedroom and study.”

“Study? Whew! don’t you know I’m out of a job and poor as a church-mouse?”

“I gathered as much; but the rooms were vacated the very day I got your letter, and, as it’s not often two communicating ones can be had at ‘Prices,’ why, I took them. I know ye’ve some scheme afoot, ye spalpeen, and ye might as well be comfortable while ye carry it out.”

“But”—

“And av ye’ve no money to pay for it, there’s them that has. Things is dirt-cheap at ‘Prices,’ anyway.”

“Oh, I’ve a hundred or so that will keep me going for a while. Tell me something about these Prices of yours.”

“Here’s the place, itself, will tell ye more than I can.”

They had halted before a large block of buildings, not of a particularly fine or imposing architecture. In fact, they had been originally dwelling-houses, then had been turned into stores, and had been applied to their present purpose with as little alteration as was practically possible. The corner house still bore over its entrance the words, “Männerchor Gesangverein;” but above this, in huge golden letters running along as much of the conglomerate building as possible, shone this inscription, “The Prices.”

“Will ye go to your rooms—I have the key in me pocket—or will ye see the place first?” asked Father McClosky. “It’s half-past eleven, and dinner is from twelve till two. I take mine at one usually, the way I won’t be interferin’ with the factory hands and teachers and the like, that has only one hour to call their own.”

Ernest Clare smiled. “Factory hands and teachers,—et id genus omne!” he said. “I think I’ll go over the building, Bryan. But do you take all your meals here? I know you’ve a house of your own.”

“Except when I brew me a cup of coffee on my little gas stove of an inclement morning,” replied the little priest, with a twinkle of his black eye. “Sure, it saves me the expense of a housekeeper, and a mighty lot of trouble. I’ve an old woman now to clean and go away peacefully, and one of me acolytes looks after the fires; and av he don’t burn the house down some fine day, he’ll do mighty well.”

“But couldn’t you rent your house, and take a room here? You’d save still more, then.”

“No doubt; but—well, Ernest, I like me little house. It’s quieter and more convenient; besides, it joins the church, and I’d not like to rent it; besides that, I’d get into trouble av I did. But it’s mighty convenient to eat here; though, to be sure, the half of them is blazing heretics, like yourself, and the rest howling infidels and bloody-minded atheists. But heretic food agrees mighty well with a Catholic digestion, I find. Here, ye can leave your gripsack in the janitor’s office.” He led the way as he spoke into the main door, within which a glass door at the side showed a small room, chiefly furnished with shelves, hooks, etc., for the reception of hats, umbrellas, and the like.

“This is Bruno Schaefer, janitor by the divine right of hereditary descent,” said Father McClosky, as a pleasant-looking young man sprang up from his seat beside a table, upon which lay several large books. “His brother Franz was the first under the present régime.”

Bruno smiled broadly at this Irish heredity as he took Mr. Clare’s grip, umbrella, and hat, in exchange for a celluloid check.

“Franz has been studying music in Germany, and now plays first violin in some famous orchestra beyant there; and Bruno is to be a heretic preacher like his father,” continued the priest. “He has a quiet berth of it here, meanwhile, eh, Bruno? ample facilities for study.”

“With a few interruptions thrown in,” replied the young man in a clear, pleasant voice.

“Well, this present interruption is the Reverend Ernest Clare, though why a heretic should be reverend, I can’t say. He has rooms on the fourth floor of the third house, and ye must learn to know him by sight as soon as ye hear him comin’.”

“I couldn’t help doing that,” said Bruno, looking with admiration, not unmixed with confusion, at his visitor’s stalwart physique.

“But I hope Mr. Clare did not understand me to complain”—

“Not at all,” said Ernest Clare, extending his hand and pressing Bruno’s cordially. “I find it harder myself to rejoice in interruptions than in any other minor trial of this life; but in your case I should think them not only an excellent drill in patience, but also a fine opportunity to study human nature.”

“That’s very true, Mr. Clare, thank you, sir,” said the young man.

“Ye villain! but ye’re a true Irishman!” said Father McClosky, as they walked on. “There ye’ve preached that lad a sermon, and given him a staff to help him on, with just a turn of your smooth tongue.”

“A staff? Oh! you mean that suggestion about interruptions. I should rather call that a fly-fan,” said Ernest Clare with a twinkle in his eye and a twist of the corner of his firm lips that made his Irish blood still more evident. He was, indeed, a native-born American; but his father had left rather a different class in Ireland from that to which McClosky père belonged, to be equally hardworking and almost equally poor in America. The sons had spent their early youth together until Bryan had been taken charge of, at his father’s death, by the Church, to be educated for a priest. Later in life they had met again; but if there were any bond between them, formed at that time, and of special strength and tenderness, it was such as would have estranged ordinary men, and even between these was only tacitly understood. Neither had ever put it into words.

“I suppose Herr Bruno is one of your heretics,” continued Mr. Clare; “if I like your Jews, Turks, and Infidels as well in proportion, Bryan”—

“Ah! he’s a fine lad, Bruno! but is it Turks ye say? Thank the pigs, we’re not troubled with the likes of them. Nor the Jews don’t take kindly to us either; but I’ll show you the grandfather of all the infidels presently, so ye’ve good luck.”

He opened as he spoke a large double swing door, which led into a dining-hall, well lit and ventilated, where, at various-sized tables, about two hundred persons could be accommodated. Only about half of these tables, however, were laid for dinner, for which Father McClosky proceeded to account.

“Ye see,” he said, “it’s only them that lives in the house, or works near by, that can spare the time to go and come. Teachers at a distance, or hands in the mills or the pottery, mostly has their dinner sent. I’ll show ye the wagon starting, in five minutes from now. Then, the mothers of families where there’s many little children finds it more convenient to take their dinners at home, too, though most of them come for supper, even the babies.”

“It must be a pretty sight,” said Ernest Clare.

Father McClosky shrugged his shoulders. “It’s Bedlam broke loose,” he said; “but sure they enjoy it, and them that don’t can stay at home. It’s a free country, and no man has a better right at ‘Prices’ than any other.”

“And which costs more—for that is the grand criterion nowadays—to eat here, or have one’s meals sent?”

“Both, and nayther,” replied the priest, “the charge is exactly the same; but of course there’s more wear and tear of property in sending. But, as that comes out of the pockets of the stockholders, it is not supposed that they will incur the loss without necessity.”

“Then all the patrons are stockholders?”

“They must be, to the extent, at least, of one share, which is five dollars. The directors found it necessary to pass a by-law to that intent, or else, as they said, just put up with regular boarding-house grumbles. Now, every one has an interest in saving, and them that can, help with the work. That saves hired labor, and makes the dividends larger.”

“Then you do pay dividends to your stockholders? I thought it was only to the workers, and that stockholders were to receive merely a fair interest on their investment.”

“We’ve two classes of stockholders,” said Father McClosky. “Those who are also patrons, and those who are not. The last named get five per cent on every dollar as promptly as pay-day comes; but the others, since they have a hand in the work,—or a tooth in it, annyhow,—we consider entitled to a share in the profits. We find it’s a good working principle. I’ve a hundred dollars in it meself, that paid me—interest and dividend—about the likes of seven dollars, last year, and sure it’s a great joy to me now when a fast day comes round.”

“So you take self-interest as the moving spring of your work?”

“Ye must take men as ye find them, Ernest, me boy. I’m not speakin’ of meself, that has neither chick nor child, brother nor sister, wife nor husband belonging to me,” said Father McClosky with intense seriousness and earnestness; “for sure it’s little matter to me if I’m full or hungry; but for a man who has little children, to whom a few dollars makes all the difference between comfort and privation,—why, ye can’t blame him if he has an eye to the main chance, as folks call it.”

“But has such a man as that always five dollars in hand to pay for his one necessary share?”

“Sure he don’t need it, av he’s enough to pay for his meals—and, as I said before, it’s but little he needs for that. He comes here and enters his name as an applicant for what we call the patron’s share, and makes arrangements for his meals, as to the number in his family and the cost per day; then he pays ten cents a week extra on his share until the whole five dollars is paid, and, the day he hands in his last instalment, gets his certificate of stock and twenty-five cents interest; for, ye see, fifty weeks is almost a year, and the directors do it as an encouragement to him.”

“Suppose he pays his five dollars down.”

“So he ought, if he’s got it, and he gets his quarter back again, but only on one share. Sure, it’s not a society for the promotion of avarice that we are.”

“I see. And one share is sufficient to enable a whole family to become patrons.”

“Yes, that is, all who are under age or not self-supporting. We find the young folks eager enough to become shareholders when they begin to work for themselves.”

“I dare say. Ah! there is the wagon you spoke of.”

They had been standing near a window overlooking a large, paved yard, into which, as he spoke, a wagon rattled at storming pace, and simultaneously a side door opened and two or three boys appeared, each bearing a tray full of tin pails. Each pail was marked in large red letters, legible to Mr. Clare at his window, with the name of the mill, factory, or schoolhouse to which it was destined, and a small white ticket just above bore that of the individual to whom it belonged. It was marvellous to see the swiftness and ease with which the loading was accomplished and the boys vanished, even though one of them stopped to “give a back” to the others, who “leap-frogged” over it into the open door.

“Boys will be boys,” said Father McClosky, “and, sure, exercise promotes digestion. Now, that wagon,” pointing to where it had just disappeared, “will be back inside of half an hour, ready to fill any other orders. There’s mighty good things in some of them buckets, let me tell ye. Miss Sally never stints on them. She says they use up what would be wasted, corners of pie and ends of cake and the like, stray apples and oranges, too, and always a kind thought for any poor girl that’s away from home, or a bone-tired teacher, with no one belonging to her.”

“Is Miss Sally one of your heretics?”

“She’s an angel, av she don’t look it! Come, I dare say she’ll let us into the kitchen, although it’s the busy time with them, and ye mustn’t expect a word with her; but it’s worth seeing.”

It proved to be. A large room, about half the size of the dining-hall, was lined on two sides with tables, a third row occupying the middle of the floor, with gangways between every two. Another side of the room showed a line of ranges in full blast. Between fifteen and twenty young people of both sexes were working under the direction of Sally Price, twelve years more gaunt and gray than when we last saw her, but with an alert, wide-awake quickness in her manner very different from the listless, quiet despair that long ago had aroused the sympathy of Dora Metzerott. A cook was in charge of each range, and a sub-cook stood ready to wait upon each. Along the fourth side of the room ran a double row of electric bells, each bearing the number of the table with which it was connected, and at a desk beneath them sat Polly, as pretty, and apparently as young as ever, though now, in truth, nearly in her thirtieth year.

“My friend Mr. Clare, Miss Polly,” said the priest. “He wants to see how you send in a meal at ‘Prices.’ We’ll not disturb annybody.”

Polly smiled, but in a pre-occupied way, and observed, with her eye upon the clock, which was upon the stroke of twelve, that if they didn’t mind the bells ringing over their heads, they could get a good view at that end of the room, and be in nobody’s way.

“The orders are left, and the tables engaged at any time during the morning,” explained the priest; “so when a bell rings, they know exactly who it is, and what he wants. The hour also is specified, and av he comes on time, his dinner is dished and ready.”

“Suppose he comes early, or late?”

“Then he don’t get it until the time, or gets it cold. ‘Prices’ believes in military punctuality.”

As he spoke, the clock struck twelve, and an electric bell sounded.

“Number 25. One!” cried Polly, clearly and distinctly. A brisk-looking girl whisked some dishes on a tray, and started for the door, beside which she paused to receive a celluloid check from a girl who sat at a high desk, with a big book, a box of checks of varying values, and a cash-box before her.

“That’s the cashier,” continued the father, who had paused to mutter an “Ave” while this was occurring. “She looks in her big book for the order belonging to 25, and gives the girl a check according. It’s a ready-money business here. The waiters are all numbered as well as the bells, and take their turn in regular rotation.”

“The discipline is truly military,” observed Mr. Clare.

“Ah! ye’re conversant with Sunday schools, and that’s why ye take notice of the same,” said Father McClosky.

“And who of these are volunteer workers?” asked Ernest Clare, watching closely the busy scene before him.

“All of them are that,” returned the father; “but Miss Sally, Miss Polly, the cashier, treasurer, secretary, and six cooks get regular salaries. The man that drives the wagon is an expressman by trade, and owns his team; he is hired by the year, and, being a stockholder and patron, charges very fairly. As for these girls and boys, they enjoy the work. There are regular relays of them; and these are arranged so as to intersperse work with books and healthful play, according to the rhyme. On Saturdays and Sundays, the teachers and some of the factory hands take their turn at cooking—as sub-cooks, that is—and waiting; and, sure, it’s a great diversion to them, especially the teachers, after using their brains all the week.”

“Rest is really only a change of labor, then, to them?”

“It’s purely voluntary, ye know,” said the priest. “None of them need do a hand’s turn av they don’t like, though I won’t say but what public opinion would have some weight; but those that are weak or sickly Miss Sally looks out for, and won’t let them do a stroke more than is good for them.”

“Miss Sally has it in her power to make or mar everything, it seems to me.”

“Ay! ye come to that, after all, Ernest. Didn’t ye say a while ago that the mainspring of this work was self-interest? Well, ye was wrong. Self-interest is only the balance-wheel; the mainspring is love of our neighbor. We couldn’t keep things going a day but for that. The root of the whole business was Christian charity, and the branches partake of the same life.”

“You have simply helped the growth or lessened the friction by making one’s neighbor’s interests identical, for the most part, with one’s own,” said Ernest Clare.

“As they should be. As long as men are individuals they will have individual interests; but one man’s food and clothing were never meant to be gained at the expense of his neighbor, as we can see when the matter is carried to its ultimate conclusion.”

“As how, for instance?”

“Well, in the case of shipwrecked mariners, or them dirty cannibals that ate one another for pleasure,” said the priest. “Sure, aither of them is only the main principle of our modern civilization stripped of its glittering adjuncts.”

Mr. Clare did not answer. There was a glance in his eye and a quiver at the corner of his mouth, very like amusement; yet he realized in the depths of his great loving heart the awful truth of the picture which his friend had drawn in such quaint colors.

“I think,” he said at last, “that I had rather not be a cannibal, that is—rich.”

The carpenter’s shop, tin-shop, jeweller’s, dry-goods, shoemaker’s, and other shops, were all on the first floor, facing upon some one of the four streets that bounded “Prices.” Above these were the dressmaker’s and milliner’s establishments; but there was little here to notice or describe, as the one distinctive feature of each separate business was, that it was owned by the company and managed by salaried workmen. There was one buying agent for the collective establishment, whose business was to fill the orders, transmitted, through the executive committee, from the heads of departments. These, therefore, while they had plenty of work, had little or no anxiety. Their salaries were secure, and their only care the business of the day. Literally, they took no thought for the morrow.

“We find our shops are very popular among the rich folks at the North End,” said Father McClosky; “they say we give good weight and good measure, and every article just what it professes to be, no less. A man—sure, it’s a Christian he calls himself; and he has a fashionable shoe-store up-town, and was mad at us for under-selling him—and says he to me, ‘So you have adopted the maxim “Honesty is the best policy.” How do you find it works?’ says he. ‘Maxim,’ says I; ‘that’s no maxim at all,’ I says; ‘it’s aither a fact or a lie, and mostly the latter,’ says I; ‘but it ought to be the universal fact that it is with us,—sure, I mean universally the fact that we find it,’ says I.”

“And so it will be, some day.”

“It’s always of a hopeful disposition ye were, Ernest. There’s too much cross-grained selfishness in the world for that day to come soon, I’m thinkin’.”

“I did not say, soon,” replied Ernest Clare quietly. “I do not know when it will come, or how; and there are times when one gets discouraged; but I believe it will come, Bryan. However, I am not ready to talk yet about my own beliefs, hopes, or plans. Is this my door?” for they had now reached the lodging department, where rooms were rented singly or in suites, to individuals or families.

“Sure ye’re pretty high up, but, with an elevator, that’s just as convenient as the ground floor. And there’s a fire-escape just beyond, and mighty handy, in case of need; though, for myself, I’d rather burn up alive like a Christian, than break me neck down one of them things,” said the priest as he applied his key to the door.

CHAPTER II.
NEO-SOCIALISM.

Much to the surprise of Father McClosky, the key declined to enter the key-hole, for excellent Communistic reasons: there was a key already there. Moreover, voices, one very loud, the other very tearful, sounded on the other side of the door.

The priest drew back, with a sorrowful gesture. “It’s Mrs. Kellar,” he said. “She is what we call our Matron, for want of a better name; die Hausfrau, the Germans call her. She sees to the rooms, gives out the bed-linen and so on, and is an invaluable person, so clean and conscientious. But—well, one must have les défauts de ses qualités, as the French say; and though she is a born ruler and manager, she has got a tongue and a temper. Of course, she has a pass-key to every room, and I suppose something has gone wrong in here, and she is scolding the unfortunate perpetrator.”

“Then we had better go in; I dare say it is nothing of any consequence that has happened,” said Ernest Clare, much amused by his friend’s correct English, which betrayed an inward perturbation very flattering to Frau Kellar’s powers of eloquence.

“I suppose we had,” said the little man hesitatingly; but with the touch of the door-knob his courage seemed to return. “Sure, she’s a well-meaning woman,” he said with a smile; “and as for temper, it’s not an Irishman that can cast a stone at her, from Malachi with the Collar of Gold, to the blessed St. Kevin himself.”

“Here he opened wide the door;” but there was a great deal more than darkness within. It was a neatly but plainly furnished sitting-room, with a brown-painted pine table, covered with a red cloth, four cane-seated chairs, and one large rocking-chair, a few empty pine bookshelves lining one side, an engraving or so, and a cheerful-looking carpet, on which—alas!—a hod of coals had been overturned. A small, pale, nervous-looking girl, with weak blue eyes and reddish hair, was on her knees beside the coals, picking them up in a weakly ineffective manner, that seemed to add fuel to the flame of Frau Kellar’s righteous anger, to the outpouring of which the victim returned no answer save the tears which dropped fast over the bridge of her nose, and, being brushed aside by a grimy hand, by no means added to her beauty.

The entrance of the two clergymen seemed to put the last stroke to her misery, for she immediately fell over on her face upon the coals, and lay there, making no sound, but shaking from head to foot with hysterical passion.