t was, the wolf often bayed at the door of the Strehla household,
without a wolf from the mountains coming down. Dorothea was one of
those maidens who almost work miracles, so far can their industry and
care and intelligence make a home sweet and wholesome and a single
loaf seem to swell into twenty. The children were always clean and
happy, and the table was seldom without its big pot of soup once a
day. Still, very poor they were, and Dorothea's heart ached with
shame, for she knew that their father's debts were many for flour and
meat and clothing. Or fuel to feed the big stove they had always
enough without cost, for their mother's father was alive, and sold
wood and fir cones and coke, and never grudged them to his
grandchildren, though he grumbled at Strehla's improvidence and
hapless, dreamy ways.

"Father says we are never to wait for him: we will have supper, now
you have come home, dear," said Dorothea, who, however she might fret
her soul in secret as she knitted their hose and mended their shirts,
never let her anxieties cast a gloom on the children; only to August
she did speak a little sometimes, because he was so thoughtful and so
tender of her always, and knew as well as she did that there were
troubles about money--though these troubles were vague to them both,
and the debtors were patient and kindly, being neighbours all in the
old twisting streets between the guard-house and the river.

Supper was a huge bowl of soup, with big slices of brown bread
swimming in it and some onions bobbing up and down: the bowl was soon
emptied by ten wooden spoons, and then the three eldest boys slipped
off to bed, being tired with their rough bodily labour in the snow all
day, and Dorothea drew her spinning-wheel by the stove and set it
whirring, and the little ones got August down upon the old worn
wolfskin and clamoured to him for a picture or a story. For August was
the artist of the family.

He had a piece of planed deal that his father had given him, and some
sticks of charcoal, and he would draw a hundred things he had seen in
the day, sweeping each out with his elbow when the children had seen
enough of it and sketching another in its stead--faces and dogs'
heads, and men in sledges, and old women in their furs, and
pine-trees, and cocks and hens, and all sorts of animals, and now and
then--very reverently--a Madonna and Child. It was all very rough, for
there was no one to teach him anything But it was all l