rm of Rubens seemed
to rise from the fog and the darkness, and to loom in its magnificence
before him, while the lips, with their kindly smile, seemed to him to
murmur, "Nay, have courage! It was not by a weak heart and by faint
fears that I wrote my name for all time upon Antwerp."

Nello ran home through the cold night, comforted. He had done his
best; the rest must be as God willed, he thought, in that innocent,
unquestioning faith which had been taught him in the little gray chapel
among the willows and the poplar-trees.

The winter was very sharp already. That night, after they reached the
hut, snow fell, and fell for very many days after that; so that the
paths and the divisions in the fields were all obliterated, and all
the smaller streams were frozen over, and the cold was intense upon the
plains. Then, indeed, it became hard work to go round for the milk while
the world was all dark, and carry it through the darkness to the silent
town. Hard work, especially for Patrasche, for the passage of the years
that were only bringing Nello a stronger youth were bringing him old
age, and his joints were stiff and his bones ached often. But he would
never give up his share of the labour. Nello would fain have spared him
and drawn the cart himself, but Patrasche would not allow it. All he
would ever permit or accept was the help of a thrust from behind to the
truck as it lumbered along through the ice-ruts. Patrasche had lived in
harness, and he was proud of it. He suffered a great deal sometimes from
frost and the terrible roads and the rheumatic pains of his limbs; but
he only drew his breath hard and bent his stout neck, and trod onward
with steady patience.

"Rest thee at home, Patrasche; it is time thou didst rest, and I can
quite well push in the cart by myself," urged Nello many a morning; but
Patrasche, who understood him aright, would no more have consented
to stay at home than a veteran soldier to shirk when the charge was
sounding; and every day he would rise and place himself in his shafts,
and plod along over the snow through the fields that his four round feet
had left their print upon so many, many years.

"One must never rest till one dies," thought Patrasche; and sometimes it
seemed to him that that time of rest for him was not very far off. His
sight was less clear than it had been, and it gave him pain to rise
after the night's sleep, though he would never lie a moment in his straw
when once the bel