ds, rendered tame by
their privations, invade the sanctity of the balcony and the window-
sills, whereon at another season their lives would not be worth a
moment's purchase. He heeded them not now, nor did he, as of yore,
resent the intrusion of Burgher Jans' terrier, when that predatory
animal came prowling within the widow's tenement in company with his
master, who had not entirely ceased his periodic visits, in spite of
"the cold shoulder" invariably turned to him by Lorischen. Mouser
wasn't going to inconvenience himself for the best dog in Christendom;
so, on the advent of the terrier, he merely hopped from the front of the
stove to the top, where he frizzled his feet and fizzed at his enemy,
without risking the danger of catching an influenza, as he might
otherwise have done if he had sought refuge elsewhere out in the cold.

Aye, for it was cold; and many was the time, when, rubbing their
tingling fingers, both the widow and Lorischen pitied the hardships to
which poor Fritz was exposed in the field, almost feeling angry and
ashamed at themselves for being comfortable when he had to endure so
much--as they knew from all the accounts published in the newspapers of
the sufferings which the invading armies had to put up with, although
Fritz himself made light of his physical grievances.

At Christmas-tide they were sad enough at his absence, with the memory
of the lost Eric also to make that merry-making time for others doubly
miserable to them; but, on the dawn of the new year, their hopes began
to brighten with the receipt of every fresh piece of news from France
concerning the progress of the war.

"The end cannot be far off now," they said to one another in mutual
consolation, so as to cheer up each other's drooping spirits. "Surely
the campaign cannot last much longer!"

The last Sunday in the month came, and on this day Madame Dort and
Lorischen went to the Marien Kirche to service.

Previously they had been in the habit of attending the Dom Kirche, from
the fact of Eric's liking to see, first as a child and afterwards as a
growing boy, the great astronomical clock whose queer-looking eyes
rolled so very curiously with the swing of the pendulum backwards and
forwards each second; but, now, they went to the other house of God for
a different reason. It, too, had an eccentric clock, distinguished for
a procession of figures of the saints, which jerked themselves into
notice each hour above the dial; st