last of all little three-year-old Ermengilda, with eyes like
forget-me-nots, whose birth had cost them the life of their
mother.

They were of that mixed race, half Austrian, half Italian, so
common in the Tyrol; some of the children were white and golden
as lilies, others were brown and brilliant as fresh-fallen
chestnuts. The father was a good man, but weak and weary with so
many to find for and so little to do it with. He worked at the
salt-furnaces, and by that gained a few florins; people said he
would have worked better and kept his family more easily if he
had not loved his pipe and a draught of ale too well; but this
had only been said of him after his wife's death, when trouble
and perplexity had begun to dull a brain never too vigorous, and
to enfeeble further a character already too yielding. As it 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.
Of 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 neighbors 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