there safe in his room; but when the
water came and he heard the children scream, he jumped down and helped;
he dragged and carried them to safety, until his breathing sounded like
a blacksmith's bellows. And when toward the very last--you can't have
your eyes everywhere--it was found that my husband had forgotten his
tax-books and a few paper gulden in his wardrobe, the old man took an
axe, entered the water which by that time reached up to his chest, broke
open the wardrobe and fetched everything like the faithful creature he
was. In this way he caught a cold, and as we couldn't summon aid at
once, he became delirious and went from bad to worse, although we did
what we could and suffered more than he did himself. For he sang
incessantly, beating time and imagining that he was giving lessons. When
the water had subsided somewhat and we were able to call the doctor and
the priest, he suddenly raised himself in bed, turned his head to one
side as though he heard something very beautiful in the distance,
smiled, fell back, and was dead. Go right up stairs; he often spoke of
you. The lady is also up there. We wanted to have him buried at our
expense, but the butcher's wife would not allow it."

She urged me to go up the steep staircase to the attic-room. The door
stood open, and the room itself had been cleared of everything except
the coffin in the centre, which, already closed, was waiting for the
pall-bearers. At the head sat a rather stout woman no longer in the
prime of life, in a colored cotton dress, but with a black shawl and a
black ribbon in her bonnet. It seemed almost as though she could never
have been beautiful. Before her stood two almost grown-up children, a
boy and a girl, whom she was evidently instructing how to behave at the
funeral. Just as I entered she was pushing the boy's arm away from the
coffin, on which he had been leaning in rather awkward fashion; then she
carefully smoothed the projecting corners of the shroud. The gardener's
wife led me up to the coffin, but at that moment the trombones began to
play, and at the same time the butcher's voice was heard from the
street, "Barbara, it's time." The pall-bearers appeared and I withdrew
to make room for them. The coffin was lifted and carried down, and the
procession began to move. First came the school children with cross and
banner, then the priest and the sexton. Directly behind the coffin
marched the two children of the butcher, and behind them