for no one would forget that I had been suspected of
being a witch, and so I would get no more work, and wherever I went they
would set the dogs on me. In a little while I would starve. The fire is
best; it is soon over. You have been good to me, you two, and I thank
you."

She snuggled closer to the fire, and put out her hands to warm them, the
snow-flakes descending soft and still on her old gray head and making
it white and whiter. The crowd was gathering now, and an egg came flying
and struck her in the eye, and broke and ran down her face. There was a
laugh at that.

I told Satan all about the eleven girls and the old woman, once, but
it did not affect him. He only said it was the human race, and what the
human race did was of no consequence. And he said he had seen it made;
and it was not made of clay; it was made of mud--part of it was, anyway.
I knew what he meant by that--the Moral Sense. He saw the thought in my
head, and it tickled him and made him laugh. Then he called a bullock
out of a pasture and petted it and talked with it, and said:

"There--he wouldn't drive children mad with hunger and fright and
loneliness, and then burn them for confessing to things invented for
them which had never happened. And neither would he break the hearts of
innocent, poor old women and make them afraid to trust themselves among
their own race; and he would not insult them in their death-agony. For
he is not besmirched with the Moral Sense, but is as the angels are, and
knows no wrong, and never does it."

Lovely as he was, Satan could be cruelly offensive when he chose; and he
always chose when the human race was brought to his attention. He always
turned up his nose at it, and never had a kind word for it.

Well, as I was saying, we boys doubted if it was a good time for Ursula
to be hiring a member of the Narr family. We were right. When the people
found it out they were naturally indignant. And, moreover, since Marget
and Ursula hadn't enough to eat themselves, where was the money coming
from to feed another mouth? That is what they wanted to know; and in
order to find out they stopped avoiding Gottfried and began to seek his
society and have sociable conversations with him. He was pleased--not
thinking any harm and not seeing the trap--and so he talked innocently
along, and was no discreeter than a cow.

"Money!" he said; "they've got plenty of it. They pay me two groschen a
week, besides my keep. And they live