forced calmness, she put up her apron the next
moment, and wept sore.

"'Tis the best that leave us," sobbed she; "that is the cruel part."

"Nay! nay!" said Elias, "our children are good children, and all are
dear to us alike. Heed her not! What God takes from us still seems
better that what He spares to us; that is to say, men are by nature
unthankful--and women silly."

"And I say Richart and Jacob were the flower of the flock," sobbed
Catherine.

The little coffer was empty again, and to fill it they gathered
like ants. In those days speculation was pretty much confined to the
card-and-dice business. Elias knew no way to wealth but the slow and
sure one. "A penny saved is a penny gained," was his humble creed. All
that was not required for the business and the necessaries of life went
into the little coffer with steel bands and florid key. They denied
themselves in turn the humblest luxuries, and then, catching one
another's looks, smiled; perhaps with a greater joy than self-indulgence
has to bestow. And so in three years more they had gleaned enough to set
up their fourth son as a master-tailor, and their eldest daughter as a
robemaker, in Tergou. Here were two more provided for: their own trade
would enable them to throw work into the hands of this pair. But the
coffer was drained to the dregs, and this time the shop too bled a
little in goods if not in coin.

Alas! there remained on hand two that were unable to get their bread,
and two that were unwilling. The unable ones were, 1, Giles, a dwarf,
of the wrong sort, half stupidity, half malice, all head and claws and
voice, run from by dogs and unprejudiced females, and sided with through
thick and thin by his mother; 2, Little Catherine, a poor little girl
that could only move on crutches. She lived in pain, but smiled through
it, with her marble face and violet eyes and long silky lashes; and
fretful or repining word never came from her lips. The unwilling ones
were Sybrandt, the youngest, a ne'er-do-weel, too much in love with play
to work; and Cornelis, the eldest, who had made calculations, and stuck
to the hearth, waiting for dead men's shoes. Almost worn out by their
repeated efforts, and above all dispirited by the moral and physical
infirmities of those that now remained on hand, the anxious couple would
often say, "What will become of all these when we shall be no longer
here to take care of them?" But when they had said this a good many
times, su