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It was good and pleasant, but nevertheless it was the end of him. He was worn .out. He ought to be thrown away. And all of a sudden he put his hands before his face and began to weep. Liljekrona's wife came quickly up to him. "Ruster," she said, "I can understand that you think that all is over for you. You cannot make a living with your music, and you are destroying yourself with brandy.

The storm whirled and played, tore apart the drifts and piled them up again, took a pillar of snow in its arms and danced out into the plain, lifted one flake up to the clouds and chased another down into a ditch. "It is so, it is so," said little Ruster; "while one dances and whirls it is play, but when one must be buried in the drift and forgotten, it is sorrow and grief."

Those who could play and dance had to do it without him. Then his wife grew uneasy; the children were discontented, everything in the house went wrong. It was the most lamentable Christmas Eve. The porridge turned sour; the candles sputtered; the wood smoked; the wind stirred up the snow and blew bitter cold into the rooms. The stable-boy who had driven Ruster did not come home.

That is to say, the Slavonians cultivate the Schiller, Germans the Oedenburger and Ruster, Magyars and Wallachians the Menesher. Good Schiller is the best Syrmian wine. But I must return from this digression to the guest of the Adler.

"Nothing," she answered, "but that Ruster has come again, and that I have engaged him as schoolmaster for our little boys." Liljekrona was quite amazed. "Do you dare?" he said, "do you dare? Has he promised to give up-–" "No," said the wife; "Ruster has promised nothing. But there is much about which he must be careful when he has to look little children in the eyes every day.

Ruster grew eager; he lifted the little boys up, each on one of his knees, and began to teach them. Liljekrona's wife went out and in and listened quite in amazement. It sounded like a game, and the children were laughing the whole time, but they learned. Ruster kept on for a while, but he was absent from what he was doing. He was turning over the old thoughts from out in the storm.

It was unjust that the drunkard should sit at the Christmas table in a happy house and spoil the Christmas pleasure. On the forenoon of Christmas Eve little Ruster had his music written out, and he said something about going, although of course he meant to stay.

Commonplace people, slaves of the home, hold me prisoner if it is in your power! When his wife heard the music, she said: "Tomorrow he is gone, if God does not work a miracle in the night. Our inhospitableness has brought on just what we thought we could avoid." In the meantime little Ruster drove about in the snowstorm.

But down they all have to go, and now it was his turn. To think that he had now come to the end! He no longer asked where the man was driving him; he thought that he was driving in the land of death. Little Ruster made no offerings to the gods that night.

"This is A," he said, "and this is C," and then he blew the notes. Then the young people wished to know what kind of an A and C it was that was to be played. Ruster took out his score and made a few notes. "No," they said, "that is not right." And they ran away for an A B C book. Little Ruster began to hear their alphabet. They knew it and they did not know it. What they knew was not very much.