n idiot, almost a lunatic? The doctor had charged
her on no account to worry or excite his patient.

Hans and Gretel looked astonished.

"Like enough, Raff," she said, nodding her head and raising her
eyebrows. "When a heavy man like thee falls on his head, it's hard to
say what will come--but thou'rt well NOW, Raff. Thank the good Lord!"

The newly awakened man bowed his head.

"Aye, well enough, mine vrouw," he said after a moment's silence, "but
my brain turns somehow like a spinning wheel. It will not be right till
I get on the dikes again. When shall I be at work, think you?"

"Hear the man!" cried Dame Brinker, delighted, yet frightened, too, for
that matter. "We must get him on the bed, Hans. Work indeed!"

They tried to raise him from the chair, but he was not ready yet.

"Be off with ye!" he said with something like his old smile (Gretel had
never seen it before). "Does a man want to be lifted about like a log?
I tell you before three suns I shall be on the dikes again. Ah! There'll
be some stout fellows to greet me. Jan Kamphuisen and young Hoogsvliet.
They have been good friends to thee, Hans, I'll warrant."

Hans looked at his mother. Young Hoogsvliet had been dead five years.
Jan Kamphuisen was in the jail at Amsterdam.

"Aye, they'd have done their share no doubt," said Dame Brinker,
parrying the inquiry, "had we asked them. But what with working and
studying, Hans has been busy enough without seeking comrades."

"Working and studying," echoed Raff, in a musing tone. "Can the
youngsters read and cipher, Meitje?"

"You should hear them!" she answered proudly. "They can run through a
book while I mop the floor. Hans there is as happy over a page of big
words as a rabbit in a cabbage patch; as for ciphering--"

"Here, lad, help a bit," interrupted Raff Brinker. "I must get me on the
bed again."

The Thousand Guilders

None seeing the humble supper eaten in the Brinker cottage that night
would have dreamed of the dainty repast hidden away nearby. Hans and
Gretel looked rather wistfully toward the cupboard as they drank their
cupful of water and ate their scanty share of black bread; but even in
thought they did not rob their father.

"He relished his supper well," said Dame Brinker, nodding sidewise
toward the bed, "and fell asleep the next moment. Ah, the dear man will
be feeble for many a day. He wanted sore to sit up again, but while I
made show of humoring him and getting ready,