re all here."

"God bless thee," sobbed Raff, kissing her again and again. "I had
forgotten that!"

Soon he looked up again and spoke in a cheerful voice. "I should know
her, vrouw," he said, holding the sweet young face between his hands and
gazing at it as though he were watching it grow. "I should know her. The
same blue eyes and the lips, and ah! me, the little song she could sing
almost before she could stand. But that was long ago," he added, with a
sigh, still looking at her dreamily. "Long ago; it's all gone now."

"Not so, indeed," cried Dame Brinker eagerly. "Do you think I would
let her forget it? Gretel, child, sing the old song thou hast known so
long!"

Raff Brinker's hand fell wearily and his eyes closed, but it was
something to see the smile playing about his mouth as Gretel's voice
floated about him like incense.

It was a simple air; she had never known the words.

With loving instinct she softened every note, until Raff almost fancied
that his two-year-old baby was once more beside him.

As soon as the song was finished, Hans mounted a wooden stool and began
to rummage in the cupboard.

"Have a care, Hans," said Dame Brinker, who through all her poverty was
ever a tidy housewife. "Have a care, the wine is there at your right and
the white bread beyond it."

"Never fear, Mother," answered Hans, reaching far back on an upper
shelf. "I shall do no mischief."

Jumping down, he walked toward his father and placed an oblong block of
pine wood in his hands. One of its ends was rounded off, and some deep
cuts had been made on the top.

"Do you know what that is, Father?" asked Hans.

Raff Brinker's face brightened. "Indeed I do, boy! It is the boat I was
making you yest--alack, not yesterday, but years ago."

"I have kept it ever since, Father. It can be finished when your hand
grows strong again."

"Yes, but not for you, my lad. I must wait for the grandchildren. Why,
you are nearly a man. Have you helped your mother through all these
years?"

"Aye and bravely," put in Dame Brinker.

"Let me see," muttered the father, looking in a puzzled way at them all,
"how long is it since the night when the waters were coming in? 'Tis the
last I remember."

"We have told thee true, Raff. It was ten years last Pinxter week."

"Ten years--and I fell then, you say? Has the fever been on me ever
since?"

Dame Brinker scarcely knew how to reply. Should she tell him all? Tell
him that he had been a