back into the warmth of
the room. And a chorus of joyful shouts was raised when Merle announced
to the children: "Father's going to bath you all to-night."

The sawed-off end of a barrel was the bathing-tub, and Peer stood in the
kitchen with his sleeves rolled up, holding the naked little bodies as
they sprawled about in the steaming water.

Mother was busy with something or other in the sitting-room. But it was
a great secret, and the children were very mysterious about it. "No, no,
you mustn't go in," they said to little Asta, who went whimpering for
her mother to the door.

And later in the evening, when the Christmas-tree was lit up, and the
windows shone white with frost, there were great doings all about the
sitting room floor. Louise got her ski on and immediately fell on her
face; Lorentz, astride of the new sleigh, was shouting "Hi, hi!--clear
the course there!", and over in a corner sat little Asta, busy putting
her baby to bed and singing it to sleep.

Husband and wife looked at each other and smiled.

"What did I tell you?" said Merle.

Slowly, with torturing slowness, the leaden-grey winter days creep by.
For two hours in the middle of the day there is pale twilight--for two
hours--then darkness again. Through the long nights the north wind howls
funeral dirges--hu-u-u-u--and piles up the snow into great drifts across
the road, deep enough, almost, to smother a sleigh and its driver. The
days and nights come and go, monotonous, unchanged; the same icy grey
daylight, and never a human soul to speak to. Across the valley a great
solid mountain wall hems you in, and you gaze at it till it nearly
drives you mad. If only one could bore a hole through it, and steal a
glimpse of the world beyond, or could climb up to the topmost ridge and
for a moment look far round to a wide horizon, and breathe freely once
more.

At last one day the grey veil lifts a little. A strip of blue sky
appears--and hearts grow lighter at the sight. The snow peaks to the
south turn golden. What? Is it actually the sun? And day by day now a
belt of gold grows broader, comes lower and lower on the hillside, till
the highest-lying farms are steeped in it and glow red. And at last one
day the red flame reaches the Courthouse, and shines in across the floor
of the room where Merle is sitting by the window patching the seat of a
tiny pair of trousers.

What life and cheer it brings with it!

"Mother--here's the sun," cries Louis