r events with as much calmness and patience as he
could muster up.

A week passed, and Miss Husted could not understand why Von Barwig
spoke in such a low tone when he replied to her cheery good-evening.
Mrs. Mangenborn put it down to hard times. Jenny knew something was
wrong, for he said very little to her as she swept out his room. She
knew something had happened, but experience had taught her that
sympathy doesn't ask questions. As for Pinac and Fico, they were too
full of their own affairs to notice anything unless it was brought
directly to their attention, and as Von Barwig made it a rule never to
burden other people with his troubles they were in blissful ignorance
of his mental perturbation. So it went on till the tenth day, when Von
Barwig made up his mind to go and call on his little pupil and find out
what was the matter.

After much hunting and questioning, Von Barwig found the family he was
looking for on the fourth floor of a crowded tenement house in
Rivington Street. He heard the whirr of sewing machines and as he
opened the door he saw the father of his pupil, and several others, all
sewing rapidly as if for dear life. The six machines made such a noise
he could barely hear the sound of his own voice. As soon as Branski
saw Von Barwig, he jumped up from his machine and railed at him in
terms of bitter reproach. It was well perhaps that Von Barwig could
not understand and that the noise of the machines and the crying of
babies prevented his hearing what was said. The father pointed into
the next room and motioned him to go in there. Pushing aside a little
chintz curtain, for there was no door, Von Barwig saw the object of his
search lying on a cot in the corner of a small inner room with no
window, only an air shaft for light and air, moaning in the grasp of
mortal illness.

The mother sat by the bedside of the sick boy rocking herself slowly,
and at the same time holding a babe to her heart. The little one was
trying in vain to get sustenance enough to satisfy its pangs of hunger
and crying because it couldn't. Another child of two years of age was
playing on the floor, banging two pieces of wood together and shouting
gleefully when it succeeded in making a noise. The woman looked at her
sick son helplessly and then at Von Barwig.

"Doctor?" she asked feebly.

Von Barwig shook his head slowly. He saw that his little pupil was too
weak to recognise him and gazed at him too moved to s