. I must send my new skates back to the
beautiful lady. Hans and I will not see the race. And Gretel's eyes,
that had been dry before, grew full of tears.

"Never cry, child," said her mother soothingly. "This sickness may not
be as bad as we think. The father has lain this way before."

Gretel sobbed now.

"Oh, mother, it is not that alone--you do not know all. I am very, very
bad and wicked!"

"YOU, Gretel! you so patient and good!" and a bright, puzzled look
beamed for an instant upon the child. "Hush, lovey, you'll wake him."

Gretel hid her face in her mother's lap and tried not to cry.

Her little hand, so thin and brown, lay in the coarse palm of her
mother's, creased with many a hard day's work. Rychie would have
shuddered to touch either, yet they pressed warmly upon each other.
Soon Gretel looked up with that dull, homely look which, they say, poor
children in shanties are apt to have, and said in a trembling voice,
"The father tried to burn you--he did--I saw him, and he was LAUGHING!"

"Hush, child!"

The mother's words came so suddenly and sharply that Raff Brinker, dead
as he was to all that was passing around him, twitched slightly upon the
bed.

Gretel said no more but plucked drearily at the jagged edge of a hole
in her mother's holiday gown. It had been burned there. Well for Dame
Brinker that the gown was woolen.

Haarlem--The Boys Hear Voices

Refreshed and rested, our boys came forth from the coffeehouse just
as the big clock in the square, after the manner of certain Holland
timekeepers, was striking two with its half-hour bell for half-past two.

The captain was absorbed in thought, at first, for Hans Brinker's sad
story still echoed in his ears. Not until Ludwig rebuked him with a
laughing "Wake up, grandfather!" did he reassume his position as gallant
boy-leader of his band.

"Ahem! this way, young gentlemen!"

They were walking through the city, not on a curbed sidewalk, for such
a thing is rarely to be found in Holland, but on the brick pavement that
lay on the borders of the cobblestone carriage-way without breaking its
level expanse.

Haarlem, like Amsterdam, was gayer than usual, in honor of Saint
Nicholas.

A strange figure was approaching them. It was a small man dressed in
black, with a short cloak. He wore a wig and a cocked hat from which a
long crepe streamer was flying.

"Who comes here?" cried Ben. "What a queer-looking object."

"That's the aanspre