heir kitchens as
precious vegetables.

At the Schagensteg Maria saw Adrian, and overtook him. The boy was
sauntering idly along, counting aloud. The burgomaster's wife called to
him, and asked why he was not at school and what he was doing there.

"I'm counting," was the reply. "Now there are nine."

"Nine?"

"I've met nine dead bodies so far; the rector sent us home. Master Dirks
is dead, and there were only thirteen of us to-day. There are some people
bringing another one."

Maria drew her kerchief tighter and walked on. At her left hand stood a
tall, narrow house, in which lived a cobbler, a jovial man, over whose
door were two inscriptions. One ran as follows:

"Here are shoes for sale,
Round above and flat below;
If David's foot they will not fit,
Goliath's sure they'll suit, I know."

The other was:

"When through the desert roved the Jews,
Their shoes for forty years they wore,
Were the same custom now in use,
'Prentice would ne'er seek cobbler's door."

On the ridge of the lofty house was the stork's nest, now empty. The
red-billed guests did not usually set out on their journey to the south
so early, and some were still in Leyden, standing on the roofs as if lost
in thought. What could have become of the cobbler's beloved lodgers? At
noon the day before, their host, who in March usually fastened the
luck-bringing nest firmly with his own hands, had stolen up to the roof,
and with his cross-bow shot first the little wife and then the husband.
It was a hard task, and his wife sat weeping in the kitchen while the
evil deed was done, but whoever is tormented by the fierce pangs of
hunger and sees his clear ones dying of want, doesn't think of old
affection and future good fortune, but seeks deliverance at the present
time.

The storks had been sacrificed too late, for the cobbler's son, his
growing apprentice, had closed his eyes the night before for his eternal
sleep. Loud lamentations reached Maria's ear from the open door of the
shop, and Adrian said: "Jacob is dead, and Mabel is very sick. This
morning their father cursed me on father's account, saying it was his
fault that everything was going to destruction. Will there be no bread
again to-day, mother? Barbara has some biscuit, and I feel so sick. I
can't swallow the everlasting meal any longer."

"Perhaps there will be a slice. We must save the baked food, child."

In the entry o