take! I'll steal!" he
added and ground his teeth. "Don't--don't go!" he sobbed, catching hold
of her dress, "for when it's dark again, he'll come and take me!"

What was Maren to do? She stood hesitating and considering; she dare not
let the boy out.

She might try and beg him off from Mrs. Holman.

"Only get me another beating for that, too!" was the answer.

There was nothing else for it; she could not let the poor little
frightened thing stay there in the coal-hole. So, with eyes closed to
the consequences of her own determination, she exclaimed: "Then you must
come up into the kitchen with me, and sleep on the bench there
to-night."

This time, Nikolai did not weigh the probabilities of what Mrs. Holman
would say or do; he only took hold of her skirt with both hands. And
with the boy close in her wake, Maren sailed up the kitchen stairs
again.

While she was looking out some of her old shawls and skirts to put under
him, taking some of the clothes from her own bed, and making it as
comfortable and warm as she could for him on the bench, Nikolai seemed
to have forgotten all his troubles.

There was so much that was new up here. There were such a number of
shining tin things hanging all over the wall, and then the cat was an
old friend. He had seen it many a time down in the yard, and now he had
to squeeze himself together to get hold of it, it had crept so far under
the bed.

There! He had knocked down the tin kettle with his back!

He fled in terror to the door. But Maren picked it up quite quietly;
there was not a word of scolding, a thing he wondered more at than
either the tin things or the cat.

Maren had at last fallen asleep after all the aching and pain of the
rheumatism in her weary joints, with which she always had to contend at
the beginning of the night. She was awakened by a wild shriek.

"What is it--what is it, Nikolai? Nikolai!"

She lighted the bit of candle. He was sitting up, fencing with his arms.

"I thought they were going to take my head off," he explained, when he
at length collected himself.

When she lay down again, Maren could not help thinking how glad she was
that she had no child to be responsible for. Every one has his trouble,
and now she had this rheumatism.

But it was a shock to her, when, on the kitchen stairs next morning, in
the presence of the servants both from the other side of the passage and
from the first floor, Mrs. Holman called her to account for havin