ill it was not that which attracted
the widow there. The church was filled with large monumental figures
with white, outstretching wings, that hovered out into prominence above
the carvings of the old oak screens, black with age. These figures
appeared as if soaring up to the roof of the chancel; and Madame Dort
had a fancy, morbid it might have been, that she could pray better
there, surrounded as it were by guardian angels, whose protection she
invoked on behalf of her boy lost at sea, and that other, yet alive, who
was "in danger, necessity," and possibly "tribulation!"

After she and Lorischen had returned home from the Marien Kirche, the
day passed quietly and melancholy away; but the next morning broke more
cheerfully.

It was the 30th of January, 1871. Both the lone women at the little
house in the Gulden Strasse remembered that fact well; for, on the
morrow, the month from which they had expected such good tidings would
be up, and if they heard nothing before its close they must needs
despair.

Seeing that the morning broke bright and cheerily, with the sun shining
down through the frost-laden air, making the snow on the roofs look
crisper and causing the icicles from the eaves to glitter in its
scintillating rays, Lorischen determined to go to market, especially as
she had not been outside the doorway, except to go to church, since the
previous week.

She had not much to buy, it is true; but then she might have a gossip
with the neighbours and hear some news, perhaps--who knows?

Anything might have happened without the knowledge of herself or her
mistress, as no one, not even Burgher Jans, had been to visit them for
ever so long!

Clad, therefore, in her thick cloak and warm boots, with her wide, red-
knitted woollen shawl over her head and portly market-basket on arm,
Lorischen sallied out like the dove from the ark, hoping perchance to
bring back with her an olive branch of comfort; while the widow sat
herself down by the stove in the parlour with her needle, stitching away
at some new shirts she was engaged on to renew Fritz's wardrobe when he
came back. Seeing an opportunity for taking up a comfortable position,
Mouser jumped up at once into her lap as soon as the old nurse had left
the room, purring away with great complacency and watching in a lazy way
the movements of her busy fingers, blinking sleepily the while at the
glowing fire in front of him.

Lorischen had not been gone long when Ma