uld hear the coyotes howling
down by the corrals, and their hungry, wintry cry used to remind the
boys of wonderful animal stories; about grey wolves and bears in the
Rockies, wildcats and panthers in the Virginia mountains. Sometimes
Fuchs could be persuaded to talk about the outlaws and desperate
characters he had known. I remember one funny story about himself that
made grandmother, who was working her bread on the bread-board, laugh
until she wiped her eyes with her bare arm, her hands being floury. It
was like this:

When Otto left Austria to come to America, he was asked by one of his
relatives to look after a woman who was crossing on the same boat, to
join her husband in Chicago. The woman started off with two children,
but it was clear that her family might grow larger on the journey. Fuchs
said he 'got on fine with the kids,' and liked the mother, though she
played a sorry trick on him. In mid-ocean she proceeded to have not
one baby, but three! This event made Fuchs the object of undeserved
notoriety, since he was travelling with her. The steerage stewardess
was indignant with him, the doctor regarded him with suspicion. The
first-cabin passengers, who made up a purse for the woman, took an
embarrassing interest in Otto, and often enquired of him about his
charge. When the triplets were taken ashore at New York, he had, as he
said, 'to carry some of them.' The trip to Chicago was even worse than
the ocean voyage. On the train it was very difficult to get milk for the
babies and to keep their bottles clean. The mother did her best, but
no woman, out of her natural resources, could feed three babies. The
husband, in Chicago, was working in a furniture factory for modest
wages, and when he met his family at the station he was rather crushed
by the size of it. He, too, seemed to consider Fuchs in some fashion to
blame. 'I was sure glad,' Otto concluded, 'that he didn't take his hard
feeling out on that poor woman; but he had a sullen eye for me, all
right! Now, did you ever hear of a young feller's having such hard luck,
Mrs. Burden?'

Grandmother told him she was sure the Lord had remembered these things
to his credit, and had helped him out of many a scrape when he didn't
realize that he was being protected by Providence.

X

FOR SEVERAL WEEKS after my sleigh-ride, we heard nothing from the
Shimerdas. My sore throat kept me indoors, and grandmother had a cold
which made the housework heavy for her. W