ng a word. At noon,
Hansei paid the woodcutter and said: "I'll cut the rest myself; you
needn't come to-morrow."

"He's a good fellow, after all," thought the grandmother to herself.
"He don't like to give in, in so many words, but afterward he does what
you tell him, for all. He soon finds out what's right."

After dinner she brought the child to him and said:

"Just look here! Just feel! There's a tooth coming already. It's very
soon, but it was just the same way with your wife. Just see how it puts
its little hands in its mouth. God be praised that our child is
thriving so nicely! Since you've been using hay for fodder, and since
it's been getting the new cow's milk, you can see the child growing
before your very eyes. If Walpurga could only see it, just for an hour.
Take it; I'll give it to you carefully. See, it's laughing at you. It
knows you. Ah, dear me! but it doesn't know its mother yet."

"I can't take the child on my arms; I'm afraid I'd hurt it," replied
Hansei.

The grandmother felt like saying: "If you let yourself go to ruin,
you'll surely harm the child--" but checked herself. When a man is
getting back into the right road, it isn't well to keep preaching at
him. Let him go on quietly in his own way, or else he will lose all
pleasure in it.--Thus thought the grandmother to herself, and, although
she had already opened her lips to speak, she swallowed her words.

Hansei looked about him, with an unsteady glance, and said:

"Mother-in-law, you were going to say something else."

"There's no need of saying everything. But yes!--you lower yourself
when you let Zenza bring messages to you. I noticed the woodcutter
making a queer face when he saw that Zenza was allowed to enter our
house. Don't go to the Windenreuthe; the place has a bad name, and it
does no one credit to go there. If you do want to go hunting, and have
bought yourself a gun, you can give a boy a penny to go there and get
it for you."

"Yes, indeed," thought Hansei, smiling, "grandmother's right; but one
needn't tell all one's thoughts."

"I'm going into the forest now. I want to be about when they load up my
wood."

He took his hat and mountain-staff, donned his hunter's pouch and
provided himself with a piece of bread. The grandmother, carrying the
child on her arm, accompanied him as far as the cherry-tree, from which
the withered leaves were already beginning to fall.

Hansei went into the forest; but, as soon as he was out