ure had given him
Fancy, and she is a good fairy that makes up for the want of very
many things! only, alas! her wings are so very soon broken, poor
thing, and then she is of no use at all.

"It is time for you all to go to bed, children," said Dorothea,
looking up from her spinning. "Father is very late to-night; you
must not sit up for him."

"Oh, five minutes more, dear Dorothea!" they pleaded; and little
rosy and golden Ermengilda climbed up into her lap. "Hirschvogel
is so warm, the beds are never so warm as he. Cannot you tell us
another tale, August?"

"No," cried August, whose face had lost its light, now that his
story had come to an end, and who sat serious, with his hands
clasped on his knees, gazing on to the luminous arabesques of the
stove.

"It is only a week to Christmas," he said, suddenly.

"Grandmother's big cakes!" chuckled little Christof, who was five
years old, and thought Christmas meant a big cake and nothing
else.

"What will Santa Claus find for 'Gilda if she be good?" murmured
Dorothea over the child's sunny head; for, however hard poverty
might pinch, it could never pinch so tightly that Dorothea would
not find some wooden toy and some rosy apples to put in her
little sister's socks.

"Father Max has promised me a big goose, because I saved the
calf's life in June," said August; it was the twentieth time he
had told them so that month, he was so proud of it.

"And Aunt Maila will be sure to send us wine and honey and a
barrel of flour; she always does," said Albrecht. Their aunt
Maila had a chalet and a little farm over on the green slopes
towards Dorp Ampas.

"I shall go up into the woods and get Hirschvogel's crown," said
August; they always crowned Hirschvogel for Christmas with pine
boughs and ivy and mountain-berries. The heat soon withered the
crown; but it was part of the religion of the day to them, as
much so as it was to cross themselves in church and raise their
voices in the "O Salutaris Hostia."

And they fell chatting of all they would do on the Christ-night,
and one little voice piped loud against another's, and they were
as happy as though their stockings would be full of golden purses
and jewelled toys, and the big goose in the soup-pot seemed to
them such a meal as kings would envy.

IV

In the midst of their chatter and laughter a blast of frozen air
and a spray of driven snow struck like ice through the room, and
r