that way."

"Not lessen you untie all of me, I won't touch a bite."

"You know why I won't untie you, papa."

"Starving will kill as dead as hanging," was Lieders's orphic response
to this.

Thekla sighed and went away, leaving the tray on the table. It may be
that she hoped the sight of food might stir his stomach to rebel against
his dogged will; if so she was disappointed; half an hour went by during
which the statue under the bedclothes remained without so much as a
quiver.

Then the old woman returned. "Aint you awful cramped and stiff, papa?"

"Yes," said the statue.

"Will you promise not to do yourself a mischief, if I untie you?"

"No."

Thekla groaned, while the tears started to her red eyelids. "But you'll
git awful tired and it will hurt you if you don't get the ropes off,
soon, papa!"

"I know that!"

He closed his eyes again, to be the less hindered from dropping back
into his distempered musings. Thekla took a seat by his side and sat
silent as he. Slowly the natural pallor returned to the high forehead
and sharp features. They were delicate features and there was an air of
refinement, of thought, about Lieders's whole person, as different
as possible from the robust comeliness of his wife. With its keen
sensitive-ness and its undefined melancholy it was a dreamer's face. One
meets such faces, sometimes, in incongruous places and wonders what they
mean. In fact, Kurt Lieders, head cabinet maker in the furniture factory
of Lossing & Co., was an artist. He was, also, an incomparable artisan
and the most exacting foreman in the shops. Thirty years ago he had
first taken wages from the senior Lossing. He had watched a modest
industry climb up to a great business, nor was he all at sea in his own
estimate of his share in the firm's success. Lieders's workmanship had
an honesty, an infinite patience of detail, a daring skill of design
that came to be sought and commanded its own price. The Lossing "art
furniture" did not slander the name. No sculptor ever wrought his soul
into marble with a more unflinching conscience or a purer joy in his
work than this wood-carver dreaming over sideboards and bedsteads.
Unluckily, Lieders had the wrong side of the gift as well as the right;
was full of whims and crotchets, and as unpractical as the Christian
martyrs. He openly defied expense, and he would have no trifling with
the laws of art. To make after orders was an insult to Kurt. He made
what was best f