rowfully. 'Hannah is never coming back,'
she said. 'Your stepfather has turned her off because she was no use
now and ate so much.'

The boy clasped his hands. 'No use now!' he repeated. 'Now! when he
is away himself all day and most of the night too,--when the lives even
of people who have their eyesight are in danger,--when the blind need
help more than ever! Oh, my poor, dear mother!'

'If it were not for the leaving you and dear old pussy here that
Juechziger has many a time threatened to kill,' sobbed the blind woman,
'I would rather die--die by some Swedish bullet! Why should I wish to
live? When your father comes home he beats me if he finds the room
cold, and do what I will I can't make the fire burn in the stove. The
tinder will not light, though I have often struck the flint and steel
together till I made my poor hands quite sore. No one lives in the
house but ourselves, so I cannot get my lamp lighted, and if I take it
across the street to a neighbour's, the wind blows it out again before
I get back.'

Conrad set energetically to work, and very soon a brisk fire was
crackling in the great stove that stood at one end of the room, gaily
ornamented with its long rows of coloured Dutch tiles. He placed his
mother carefully in a warm corner, sat down beside her, and then began:
'Rudorf the journeyman is in bed at our house with a broken leg. It's
not at all dangerous, and he gets his gulden of pay and his allowance
of bread regularly every week. I only wish I was a journeyman, then I
could go and fight and earn some money for you. And Hillner the
Defensioner has got on first-rate; the officers all like him, and the
governor himself talks to him ever so often. Our mistress loves to see
him come into the house, and I'm sure she will marry him as soon as the
siege is over, and he is made a citizen and a master carpenter. But
then we can't even begin to guess when the siege will be over, for
these Swedes keep attacking the town worse than ever. You would think
they might have been satisfied with knocking ever so many of our houses
to pieces, but now, what with their new batteries, and their new
trenches, and nobody knows how many fascines'--

'Alas, alas!' interrupted Mistress Juechziger. 'What does a poor blind
woman like me know about such dreadful things? Have you a morsel of
bread in your pocket, my dear boy? Pussy and I have had nothing to eat
since early this morning.'

'My poor mother,'