time on the people in
the neighborhood used to come to me whenever one of them was sick, and
made me give them a drink. Do you remember the time you came home sick
from the fields? Then I helped you too, and that was the first time
afterward that I gave any thing to anybody. The doctor heard of it that
time and complained of me at court. Then I received a notice to do no
more quackery, on pain of great punishment. After that I never listened
to anybody's begging or crying.

"Something happened about that time: you can't remember it; you were
too little. Dick, who lives out in one of the houses off the main
street of the village, had two sons. One was like a count: he was with
the Guard in Stuttgard, and was home on furlough. His best friend was
his younger brother,--a wild, half-grown boy whom they called Joachim.
The guardsman went to see pretty Walpurgia the seamstress: you know
her, I guess, she has such a white, delicate face, and always runs
about in slippers: but she had another lover besides, from Betra.
Dick's boys, the two brothers, once lay in wait for this chap to give
him a good drubbing; but the Betra boy held his own: so little Joachim
takes out his knife, makes a stab at him, and stabs his brother through
the body.

"I was lying in my shepherd's van, and suddenly I heard people crying
and calling. I got up, and there was a crowd of men, and Joachim among
them, all begging me to do something for the wounded man. All this made
me think of that awful night at home: Walpurgia even looked a little
like Lizzie; and, in short, I let little Jake mind the sheep, and went
with them. As I saw the guardsman lying at the point of death, my heart
seemed to turn within me. I cried like a child, and people praised my
good heart: they didn't know what was the matter with me, and I
couldn't tell them. I gave the guardsman a drink to keep off
mortification; but afterward the doctors got at him, and he died after
all. In short, they locked me up and put me in the penitentiary for a
year. Joachim got into the penitentiary too. He was bad, and tried for
a long time to put all the blame on the Betra man; but at last it was
proved that it was nobody but him. Brother-heart," said Nat, taking
Ivo's hand, "what I suffered in the penitentiary is more than can be
told; you couldn't find worse company in hell itself. But I bore it all
willingly, and thought it was a chastisement for my past life.

[Illustration: She took a lantern