e. In the
cold and darkness he could just distinguish among the sparse furniture
a slim, wretched-looking woman sitting on a chair by the table, nursing
a baby wrapped in an old blanket; a tall, large-boned man in workman's
clothes, with a bushy beard and gloomy eyes, leaning against the wall
beside the window, and some fair-haired children, unnaturally silent
and motionless for their age, crouching side by side on the bed, only
swinging their legs a little from time to time.

At Wilhelm's entrance with a friendly "Good-evening," the woman rose
from her seat and gazed at the intruder with hostile eyes, the children
ceased swinging their legs, and the workman shrank away from the window
into the deeper shadow of the corner.

"The landlord," Stubbe announced solemnly.

Frau Wander threw up her head. "Now then, what do you want now?" she
said hurriedly, her bitter tone beginning on the ordinary pitch, but
rising rapidly to a shrewish scream. "It's the rent, I suppose; and I
suppose we're to have notice to quit? It's all one to me. I've got no
money and so I tell you; but what's here you can keep, and you can have
the skin off my back too, and I'll throw in the children beside. They
can drag a milk-cart as well as dogs. Why don't you cut my throat at
once and have done with it?"

"But, my good woman," cried Stubbe, horror-stricken, "what are you
thinking of? The Herr Doctor only means well by you."

Wilhelm had come quite close to the poor thing, who had worked herself
up into such a state of excitement that she was trembling from head to
foot, and said in that gentle voice of his that always found its way to
the heart:

"You are worrying yourself unnecessarily, Frau Wander. I have not come
about the rent, and nobody is going to turn you out of your home. Herr
Stubbe here has been telling me about your troubles, and I came to see
if we could not give you a little assistance."

She stared at him speechless, with wide-open eyes. The children on the
bed began to whisper to one another. Wilhelm took advantage of the
pause to say a few words in Father Stubbe's ear, whereupon the old man
vanished.

"Why don't you offer the gentleman a chair?" said the workman, coming
out of his dark corner.

The woman slowly drew forward a chair, round the torn seat of which the
straw stood up raggedly on all sides. Wilhelm thanked her with a wave
of the hand.

"Do not be afraid of me, dear Frau Wander," he went on. "Tell me
somethi