same, she felt as if she should die, and carrying the baby, which
she had held in her arms while begging at the church door, back into the
room, she told Walpurga to watch it, as she had long been in the habit
of doing, until she came back with the bread.

"For the children's sake she would try begging once more, but she could
not go to St. Sebald's.

"So she went from house to house, asking alms; but she was a well-formed
woman, who did not show her serious illness. She kept herself tidy, too,
and looked better in her poor rags than many who were better off. Had
she carried her nursing infant, perhaps she might have succeeded better,
but even the most compassionate housewives either turned her from their
doors or offered her work at the wash-tub, or in cleaning or gardening.
The weakness from which she had suffered since the birth of her child
made stooping so painful that she could not do what they required.

"When she was at last obliged to turn homeward, because the baby had
probably been screaming for her a long time, she had only one small
copper coin, with which she went to the baker Kilian's, in the
Stopfelgasse, to ask for a penny's worth of bread. The baker's wife
was not there, and her spinster sister-in-law, an elderly, ill-natured
woman, was serving the customers in her place.

"As she turned to cut the bit of bread, and all sorts of nice sweet
cakes lay on the shining counters before poor Riecklein, the children
seemed to stand before her, headed by Walpurga, asking for the cakes
and the bread she had promised them to eat their fill; and as no one
was passing in the quiet street, Satan stirred within her for the first
time, and a sweet jumble slid into the little basket on her arm. Had
she stopped there she might have escaped unpunished; but there were two
hungry little beaks agape in the nest, and she saw a pretty lamb with
a little red flag on its back. If Walpurga could only have it! And with
the clumsiness due to her inexperience in such matters she seized that,
too, and put it with the other.

"Meanwhile the sister-in-law had turned, and instead of enquiring at a
time so near the holy feast what had induced her to commit such a crime,
she shrieked, 'Stop thief!' and similar cries.

"So the widow was taken to the Hole, and as she had hitherto borne an
unsullied reputation and was the child of a good man, justice allowed
itself to be satisfied with having her scourged with rods privately
instead