him hang himself----"

"Hang himself?" stammered Lossing, "you don't mean----"

"Yes, he was hang himself, but I cut him, no I broke him down," said
Thekla, accurate in all the disorder of her spirits; and forthwith, with
many tremors, but clearly, she told the story of Kurt's despair. She
told, as Lieders never would have known how to tell, even had his pride
let him, all the man's devotion for the business, all his personal
attachment to the firm; she told of his gloom after the elder Lossing
died, "for he was think there was no one in this town such good man
and so smart like your fader, Mr. Lossing, no, and he would set all
the evening and try to draw and make the lines all wrong, and, then, he
would drow the papers in the fire and go and walk outside and he say, 'I
can't do nothing righd no more now the old man's died; they don't have
no use for me at the shop, pretty quick!' and that make him feel awful
bad!" She told of his homesick wanderings about the shops by night;
"but he was better as a watchman, he wouldn't hurt it for the world! He
telled me how you was hide his dinner-pail onct for a joke, and put in a
piece of your pie, and how you climbed on the roof with the hose when
it was afire. And he telled me if he shall die I shall tell you that
he ain't got no hard feelings, but you didn't know how that mantel had
ought to be, so he done it right the other way, but he hadn't no righd
to talk to you like he done, nohow, and you was all righd to send him
away, but you might a shaked hands, and none of the boys never said
nothing nor none of them never come to see him, 'cept Carl Olsen, and
that make him feel awful bad, too! And when he feels so bad he don't no
more want to live, so I make him promise if I git him back he never try
to kill himself again. Oh, Mr. Lossing, please don't let my man die!"

Bewildered and more touched than he cared to feel, himself, Lossing
still made a feeble stand for discipline. "I don't see how Lieders can
expect me to take him back again," he began.

"He aint expecting you, Mr. Lossing, it's ME!"

"But didn't Lieders tell you I told him I would never take him back?"

"No, sir, no, Mr. Lossing, it was not that, it was you said it would
be a cold day that you would take him back; and it was git so cold
yesterday, so I think, 'Now it would be a cold day to-morrow and Mr.
Lossing he can take Kurt back.' And it IS the most coldest day this
year!"

Lossing burst into a laugh, pe