you have it for forty, with fifty the second year."

"No, forty for two years. We can't pay more. We're just starting, and
expenses must be kept down."

"Well, forty then. You are nice people--hard workers. I want to see
you get on." The philanthropic old man returned to his sweeping.
"Always the way, dealing with a woman," he growled into his beard.
"They don't know the value of anything. Well, I'll get my money
anyway, and that's a point."

She spent the day shopping and by half-past five had her arrangements
almost completed. And she told every one about the coming marriage and
the new shop and asked them to spread the news.

"We'll be open for business next Saturday a week," she said. "Give us a
trial."

By nightfall Otto was receiving congratulations. He protested, denied,
but people only smiled and winked. "You're not so sly as you think,"
they said. "No doubt she promised to keep it quiet, but you know how
it is with a woman."

When he called at Brauner's at seven he was timid about going in.
"They've heard the story," he said to himself, "and they must think I
went crazy and told it."

She had been bold enough all day, but she was shy, now that the time
had come to face him and confess--she had been a little shy with him
underneath ever since she had suddenly awakened to the fact that he was
a real hero--in spite of his keeping a shop just like everybody else
and making no pretenses. He listened without a word.

"You can't back out now," she ended.

Still he was silent. "Are you angry at me?" she asked timidly.

He could not speak. He put his arms round her and pressed his face
into her waving black hair. "MY Hilda," he said in a low voice. And
she felt his blood beating very fast, and she understood.

"Arbeit und Liebe und Heim," she quoted slowly and softly.

X

MR. FEUERSTEIN IS CONSISTENT

The next day Mr. Feuerstein returned from exile. It is always
disillusioning to inspect the unheroic details of the life of that
favorite figure with romancers--the soldier of fortune. Of Mr.
Feuerstein's six weeks in Hoboken it is enough to say that they were
weeks of storm and stress--wretched lodgments in low boarding-houses,
odd jobs at giving recitations in beer halls, undignified ejectments
for drunkenness and failure to pay, borrowings which were removed from
frank street-begging only in his imagination. He sank very low indeed,
but it must be recorded to the credit of his co