with a not unnatural amazement as her
husband unrolled his cloak and showed her the boy, who, blinking
painfully at the sudden light, tried to struggle down from his arms.

"See, Lisbeth!" he said, "I have found you a Christmas present where I
least expected one--an unhappy baby left in the streets to die of cold
and hunger."

His wife laid her own infant in the cradle and gazed alternately at her
husband and at the child he carried. She was at all times slow to
receive impressions, and slower yet to put her thoughts into words. When
she spoke, it was without apparent emotion of any kind. "What are you
going to do with him, Peter?" she said.

"What am I going to do with him?" was the reply. "I am going to feed and
clothe and shelter him, and make an honest man out of him, please God.
It cannot be that you would refuse the poor child a home?"

Lisbeth made no answer. She was a large, fair, sleepy-eyed woman, who
had been accounted a beauty in her day. A model wife, too, people said;
neat in dress, quiet of tongue, her conduct staid, her whole thoughts
centred in her household. She now took the boy, noting with a woman's
eye his coarse and ragged clothing, and stood him on his unsteady little
feet. A faint expression of disgust rippled over her smooth, unthinking
face.

"He is a humpback," she said, slowly.

Her husband started to his feet. In all ages physical deformity has been
a thing repulsive to our eyes; but at this early day it was regarded
with unmixed horror and aversion, and was too often considered as the
index of a crooked mind within. Peter Burkgmaeier, tall and erect, with a
frame of iron and sinews of steel, as became a master stone-mason, stood
gazing at the poor little atom of misshapen humanity who tottered over
the polished wooden floor. The spinal column was sadly bent, and from
between the humped shoulders the pale face peered with an old, uncanny
look. Yet the boy was not otherwise ugly. His forehead was broad and
smooth, and his dark blue eyes were well and deeply set. The artisan
watched him for a minute in painful silence, then turned to his wife and
took her passive hand in his.

"Lisbeth," he said, with grave kindness, "I know that I am asking a
great deal of you when I beg you to take this child under our roof. He
will be to you much care and trouble, and may never find his way into
your heart. At any other time, believe me, I would not put this burden
on your shoulders. But it is Chris