, only me!"

"Hein!" grunted Lorischen. "A nice `me' it is--a little, inquisitive,
meddlesome morsel of a man!"

"Oh, Meinherr Burgher Jans," said Madame Dort, rising up from the sofa.
"I'm glad to see you; I wanted to ask you something. I--"

Just at that moment she caught sight of the letter she held between her
fingers, when she recollected all at once the news she had received, of
which she had been for the time oblivious.

"Ah, poor Fritz!" she exclaimed, bursting into a fit of weeping. "My
son, my firstborn, I shall never see him more!"

"Why, what have you heard, gracious lady?" said Burgher Jans, abandoning
his refuge by the door, and coming forwards into the centre of the room.
"No bad news, I trust, from the young and well-born Herr?"

"Read," said the widow, extending the letter in her hand towards him;
"read for yourself and see."

His owlish eyes all expanded with delight through the tortoise-shell
spectacles, the fat little man eagerly took hold of the rustling piece
of paper and unfolded it, his hands trembling with nervous anxiety to
know what the missive contained--and which he had been all along burning
with curiosity to find out.

Lorischen actually snorted with indignation.

"There, just see that!" she grumbled through her set teeth, opening and
clenching her fingers together convulsively, as if she would like to
snatch the letter away from him--when, perhaps, she would have expressed
her feelings pretty forcibly in the way of scratches on the Burgher's
beaming face: "there, I wouldn't have let him see it if he had gone down
on his bended knees for it--no, not if I had died first!"

The widow continued to sob in her handkerchief; while the Burgher
appeared to gloat over the delicate angular handwriting of the letter,
as if he were learning it by heart and spelling out every word--he took
so long over it.

"Ah, it is bad, gracious lady," he said at length; "but, still, not so
bad as it might otherwise be."

Madame Dort raised her tear-stained face, looking at the little roan
questioningly; while Lorischen, who in her longing to hear about Fritz
had not quitted the apartment, according to her usual custom when
Burgher Jans was in it, drew nearer, resting her impulsive fingers on
the table, so as not to alarm that worthy unnecessarily and make him
stop speaking.

The Burgher felt himself a person of importance, on account of his
opinion being consulted; so he drew himself up to his fu