her looked at Hedwig with beaming eyes. There was her
grandmother to the life. Turning to the old man, he said, "You must
remember the time when they introduced the decades into France?"

"Ducats, do you mean? why, they come from Italy."

"I mean decades. They ordained that people should rest every tenth day,
instead of every seventh. Then everybody fell sick also. The number
seven is repeated in a mysterious manner throughout the whole course of
nature, and must not be arbitrarily removed."

"Why, they must have been crazy! A Sunday every ten days! ha, ha!" said
the old man.

"Do you know the story of the lord who is hewn in stone in our church
here, with the dog?" asked Hedwig.

"No: tell it."

"He was one of those fellows, too, that didn't keep holy the Sunday. He
was a lord----"

"Lord of Isenburg and Nordstetten," explained her grand-uncle.

[Illustration: The dog wouldn't go to church with him.]

"Yes," continued Hedwig: "at Isenburg you can just see a wall or two of
his castle. He never cared for Sundays or holidays, and loved nothing
in the world but his dog, that was as big and as savage as a wolf. On
Sundays and holidays he forced people to labor; and, if they didn't
work willingly, the dog would fly at them of his own accord and almost
tear them to pieces; and then the lord would laugh: and he called the
dog Sunday. He never went to church but once,--when his daughter was
married. He wanted to take his dog Sunday to church with him, but the
dog wouldn't go: he laid himself down on the steps till his lord came
out again. As he came out, he stumbled over the dog and fell down
stone-dead; and his daughter died too: and so now they're both
chiselled in stone in the church, and the dog beside them. They say the
dog was the devil, and the lord had sold him his soul."

The teacher undertook to show that this myth was probably suggested by
the sight of the monument, the origin of which had been forgotten; that
the feudal proprietors were fond of being pictured with crests and
symbols, and so on: but he found little favor with his hearers.

No one was disposed to continue the conversation. Hedwig made a little
hole in the sand with her foot, and the teacher discovered for the
first time how small it was.

"Do you read on Sunday, sometimes?" he said, looking straight before
him. No one answering, he looked at Hedwig, who then replied, "No: we
make the time pass without it."

"How?"

"Why, how can you