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Through the open cottage door we can look out upon the level Dutch landscape, all alive with the falling snow. Conclusion Our story is nearly told. Time passes in Holland just as surely and steadily as here. In that respect no country is odd. To the Brinker family it has brought great changes.

Every week the father would take out the stocking and drop in the money and laugh and kiss me as we tied it up together. Up with you, Hans! There you sit gaping, and the day a-wasting!" added Dame Brinker tartly, blushing to find that she had been speaking too freely to her boy. "It's high time you were on your way." Hans had seated himself and was looking earnestly into her face.

'Tis the last I remember." "We have told thee true, Raff. It was ten years last Pinxter week." "Ten years and I fell then, you say? Has the fever been on me ever since?" Dame Brinker scarcely knew how to reply. Should she tell him all? Tell him that he had been an idiot, almost a lunatic? The doctor had charged her on no account to worry or excite his patient. Hans and Gretel looked astonished.

Gretel laughed merrily. Dame Brinker moaned. "Shame on you, Hans!" And she went wearily into the cottage. The fairy godmother sprang up and stamped her foot three times. "Thou shalt have thy wish," said she. "Let them say what they will." Then, with playful solemnity, she put her hand in her apron pocket and drew forth a large glass bead.

For a few moments the meester seemed lost in thought, then, arousing himself, he spoke in a new voice. "Forgive me, Raff Brinker, for this tumult. Do not feel distressed on my account. I leave your house today a happier man than I have been for many a long year. Shall I take the watch?" "Certainly, you must, mynheer. It was your son's wish."

I could have waited for you to come to your work tomorrow, had I not wished to call. And, Hans, talking of your work, my father is much pleased with it. A carver by trade could not have done it better. He would like to have the south arbor ornamented, also, but I told him you were going to school again." "Aye!" put in Raff Brinker, emphatically.

Soon he was comfortably settled under the new cover, declaring, as his vrouw tucked him in snug and warm, that it was the last daylight that should see him abed. "Aye! I can hope it myself," laughed Dame Brinker, "now you have been frisking about at that rate."

"That was not the worst of it," continued Dame Brinker, knitting slowly and trying to keep count of her stitches as she talked. "That was not near the worst of it. The dreadful landlord went and cut up the young gentlemen's bodies into little pieces and threw them into a great tub of brine, intending to sell them for pickled pork!"

He looked at Marion as if he dared her to make as many guesses as she wished. She shook her head. "You ain't the only one that'd never hit it," he went on with satisfaction. "Thad ropes him, an' while they lay there restin', Sunnysides all tied up so he can't move, an' Brinker rubbin' some bumps he'd come by in the fracas, just then the red comes up onto Sangre de Cristo.

Dame Brinker and her boy stood by the window while the doctor and his assistant, bending over the bedside, conversed together in a low tone. There was no danger of disturbing the patient. He appeared like one blind and deaf. Only his faint, piteous moans showed him to be a living man. Hans was talking earnestly, and in a low voice, for he did not wish his sister to hear.