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ministrations, now that he had lived for a little while with them,
would have been sorrow indeed.

He even forgot that he was clothed in rags, and wore them as if they
were the faultless garments of a prince. It was only when he was alone
that he looked down on them and sighed. One day he had come to the
cabin to ask if he might take for a little while a needle and thread,
but when he got there, the conversation wandered to discussion of the
writers and the tragedies of the various nations and of their poets,
and the needle and thread were forgotten.

To-day, as the snow fell, it reminded Amalia of his need, and she
begged him to stay with them a little to see what the box he had
rescued for them contained. He yielded, and, taking up the violin, he
held it a moment to his chin as if he would play, then laid it down
again without drawing the bow across it.

"Ah, Mr. 'Arry, it is that you play," cried Amalia, in delight. "I
know it. No man takes in his hand the violin thus, if he do not
play."

"I had a friend once who played. No, I can't." He turned away from it
sadly, and she gently laid it back in its box, and caught up a piece
of heavy material.

"Look. It is a little of this left. It is for you. My mother has much
skill to make garments. Let us sew for you the blouse."

"Yes, I'll do that gladly. I have no other way to keep myself decent
before you."

"What would you have? All must serve or we die." Madam Manovska spoke,
"It is well, Sir 'Arry King, you carry your head like one prince, for
I will make of you one peasant in this blouse."

The two women laughed and measured him, and conferred volubly together
in their own tongue, and he went out from their presence feeling that
no prince had ever been so honored. They took also from their store
warm socks of wool and gave him. Sadly he needed them, as he realized
when he stepped out from their door, and the soft snow closed around
his feet, chilling them with the cold.

As he looked up in the sky he saw the clouds were breaking, and the
sun glowed through them like a great pale gold moon, even though the
flakes continued to veil thinly the distance. His heart lightened and
he went back to the cabin to tell them the good news, and to ask them
to pray for clear skies to-morrow. Having been reared in a rigidly
puritanic school of thought, the time was, when first he knew them,
that the freedom with which Amalia spoke of the Deity, and of the
Christ, and the