the coffin opened his eyes, and with a cry of joy his mother
pressed him to her heart. Among the boughs of the Christmas-tree there
was a soft rustling and whispering.

Methinks the tree remembered that winter is only a deep sleep, and was
dreaming of spring.

II.

The years of misery and war were over. In the streets of the old town,
where only a few years ago the roll of the drum resounded, and where the
plague, in deathly silence, had spread its black wings, there, the stork
on the town-hall heard, to his great satisfaction, merry shouts of
children,--the ringing laugh of peace. A group of boys chased each
other noisily over the market-place, playing at war. War! which had
desolated so many of their homes. Oh! the fresh, merry laughter of
childhood! how like unto ivy it climbeth over all ruins and findeth at
last the sunshine!

But there was one not amongst the noisy group, and that one was Hans.
His parents perceived with anxiety that the little noisy child had grown
into a silent, shy boy, who avoided the games of his comrades and
dreamingly went his own way. For hours he sat in the garden on the bench
near his mother's flowers, and gazed dreamingly at the busy bees and
butterflies, or lay in the woods near by and stared up through the
branches of the beech-trees at the blue sky.

"What are you thinking of?" his mother would ask at times; then he would
start up like one awakened from sleep, the thread of whose dreams are
broken by awaking. "He is ill," the mother would think, anxiously. But
folks would shake their heads suspiciously when, on speaking to the boy,
they received no other answer than a shy, questioning look. "There is
something wanting," said some, with an unmistakable gesture. "He is a
fool," murmured others.

Thus a boy fares who has peeped too early into Paradise. The children
of his own age made fun of him, and poor Hans would have been quite
forsaken if Liesel from next door had not taken his part. She was quite
the opposite to him,--merry and high-spirited. Whilst he sat dreaming,
she was romping about, singing and laughing. But the children kept
together, and the parents thought they might some day be a pair. The
boy's reserved nature vexed the father, and, being of the opinion that
man's hand cannot learn too early to handle and knead the tough clay of
existence, he apprenticed him to a potter, in the hope that time would
change the character of his son. He was mistaken, however; the b