broken loneliness, the store of thoughts put
away in her old head, and the care in her heart had given her the
habit of soliloquy.

"And it will be worse yet. He has debts beyond calculation. He
will die on a litter of straw, or in a hospital. Oh, if his dead
mother could see this! Arabian adventure! Unless Stefanek and I
drag him out of this pit!"

She stopped sewing and raised her spectacles to her forehead,
their glass eyes gleamed above her gray brows, and she fell into
deep thought. She moved her lips from time to time, but did not
mutter. By this movement of the lips, and by her wrinkles, it
could be seen that she was forming some plan, that she was
imagining. Just then Kranitski's voice was heard from the
bedroom.

She sprang up with the liveliness of twenty years, and, with a
loud clattering of old overshoes, ran to the door.

"Give me the dressing-gown, mother; I am not well; I will not go
anywhere to-day."

"Here is the dressing-gown; but if the lining is torn?"

"Torn or not, give it here, and my slippers, too; for I am not
well."

"Here they are! Not well? I have said not well! O beloved God,
what will come of this?"

But, while helping him to put on the dressing-gown, she inquired,
with incredulity:

"Is it true, or a joke, that you will not leave the house
to-day?"

"A joke!" answered he in bitterness. "If you knew what a joke
this is! I will not leave the house to-day, or to-morrow, or
perhaps ever. I will lie here and grieve till I grieve to death.
Oh, that it might be very soon!"

"Arabian adventure! Never has it been like this! It is easy to
see that the pitch has burnt!" whispered widow Clemens to
herself. But aloud she said:

"Before you grieve to death we must get you some dinner. I will
run to the town for meat. I will lock the door outside, so that
impertinent counts, and various barons should not burst in,"
added she, ironically.

Kranitski, left alone, locked up in his lodgings, robed in his
dressing-gown, once costly, now faded, its sleeves tattered at
the wrists, lay on the long-chair in front of his collection of
pipes, arranged on the wall cunningly. In the society in which he
moved collecting was universal. They collected pictures,
miniatures, engravings, autographs, porcelain, old books, old
spoons, old stuffs. Kranitski collected pipes. Some he had
bought, but the greater number, by far, he had received on
anniversaries of his name's-day, in proof of friendly
recoll