beautiful. In effect they were days of companionship with one's sacred
dead, and I have known no comradeship that was so close or so precious.
We clung to the hours and the minutes, counting them as they wasted
away, and parting with them with that pain and bereavement which a miser
feels who sees his hoard filched from him coin by coin by robbers and is
helpless to prevent it.

When the evening of the last day came we stayed out too long; Seppi and
I were in fault for that; we could not bear to part with Nikolaus; so
it was very late when we left him at his door. We lingered near awhile,
listening; and that happened which we were fearing. His father gave him
the promised punishment, and we heard his shrieks. But we listened only
a moment, then hurried away, remorseful for this thing which we had
caused. And sorry for the father, too; our thought being, "If he only
knew--if he only knew!"

In the morning Nikolaus did not meet us at the appointed place, so we
went to his home to see what the matter was. His mother said:

"His father is out of all patience with these goings-on, and will not
have any more of it. Half the time when Nick is needed he is not to be
found; then it turns out that he has been gadding around with you two.
His father gave him a flogging last night. It always grieved me before,
and many's the time I have begged him off and saved him, but this time
he appealed to me in vain, for I was out of patience myself."

"I wish you had saved him just this one time," I said, my voice
trembling a little; "it would ease a pain in your heart to remember it
some day."

She was ironing at the time, and her back was partly toward me. She
turned about with a startled or wondering look in her face and said,
"What do you mean by that?"

I was not prepared, and didn't know anything to say; so it was awkward,
for she kept looking at me; but Seppi was alert and spoke up:

"Why, of course it would be pleasant to remember, for the very reason
we were out so late was that Nikolaus got to telling how good you are to
him, and how he never got whipped when you were by to save him; and he
was so full of it, and we were so full of the interest of it, that none
of us noticed how late it was getting."

"Did he say that? Did he?" and she put her apron to her eyes.

"You can ask Theodor--he will tell you the same."

"It is a dear, good lad, my Nick," she said. "I am sorry I let him get
whipped; I will never do it again. To