s, too, as they did years ago. When
she reached the house and little Walpurga--you'll see her presently, a
pretty child six years old--ran to meet her, asking for the cakes and the
bread to satisfy her hunger, while Annelein, who is somewhat older, but
less bright and active, did the same, she felt as if she should die, and
carrying the baby, which she had held in her arms while begging at the
church door, back into the room, she told Walpurga to watch it, as she
had long been in the habit of doing, until she came back with the bread.

"For the children's sake she would try begging once more, but she could
not go to St. Sebald's.

"So she went from house to house, asking alms; but she was a well-formed
woman, who did not show her serious illness. She kept herself tidy, too,
and looked better in her poor rags than many who were better off. Had she
carried her nursing infant, perhaps she might have succeeded better, but
even the most compassionate housewives either turned her from their doors
or offered her work at the wash-tub, or in cleaning or gardening. The
weakness from which she had suffered since the birth of her child made
stooping so painful that she could not do what they required.

"When she was at last obliged to turn homeward, because the baby had
probably been screaming for her a long time, she had only one small
copper coin, with which she went to the baker Kilian's, in the
Stopfelgasse, to ask for a penny's worth of bread. The baker's wife was
not there, and her spinster sister-in-law, an elderly, ill-natured woman,
was serving the customers in her place.

"As she turned to cut the bit of bread, and all sorts of nice sweet cakes
lay on the shining counters before poor Riecklein, the children seemed to
stand before her, headed by Walpurga, asking for the cakes and the bread
she had promised them to eat their fill; and as no one was passing in the
quiet street, Satan stirred within her for the first time, and a sweet
jumble slid into the little basket on her arm. Had she stopped there she
might have escaped unpunished; but there were two hungry little beaks
agape in the nest, and she saw a pretty lamb with a little red flag on
its back. If Walpurga could only have it! And with the clumsiness due to
her inexperience in such matters she seized that, too, and put it with
the other.

"Meanwhile the sister-in-law had turned, and instead of enquiring at a
time so near the holy feast what had induced her to com