fters and mud floor, and broken whitewashed
walls. A curious little place, filled with all manner of articles. Next
to the fire was a great toolbox; beyond that the little bookshelf with
its well-worn books; beyond that, in the corner, a heap of filled and
empty grain-bags. From the rafters hung down straps, riems, old boots,
bits of harness, and a string of onions. The bed was in another corner,
covered by a patchwork quilt of faded red lions, and divided from the
rest of the room by a blue curtain, now drawn back. On the mantelshelf
was an endless assortment of little bags and stones; and on the wall
hung a map of South Germany, with a red line drawn through it to show
where the German had wandered. This place was the one home the girls had
known for many a year. The house where Tant Sannie lived and ruled was
a place to sleep in, to eat in, not to be happy in. It was in vain she
told them they were grown too old to go there; every morning and evening
found them there. Were there not too many golden memories hanging about
the old place for them to leave it?

Long winter nights, when they had sat round the fire and roasted
potatoes, and asked riddles, and the old man had told of the little
German village, where, fifty years before, a little German boy had
played at snowballs, and had carried home the knitted stockings of a
little girl who afterward became Waldo's mother; did they not seem to
see the German peasant girls walking about with their wooden shoes and
yellow, braided hair, and the little children eating their suppers out
of little wooden bowls when the good mothers called them in to have
their milk and potatoes?

And were there not yet better times than these? Moonlight nights, when
they romped about the door, with the old man, yet more a child than any
of them, and laughed, till the old roof of the wagon-house rang?

Or, best of all, were there not warm, dark, starlight nights, when they
sat together on the doorstep, holding each other's hands, singing German
hymns, their voices rising clear in the still night air--till the German
would draw away his hand suddenly to wipe quickly a tear the children
must not see? Would they not sit looking up at the stars and talking of
them--of the dear Southern Cross, red, fiery Mars, Orion, with his belt,
and the Seven Mysterious Sisters--and fall to speculating over them?
How old are they? Who dwelt in them? And the old German would say
that perhaps the souls we loved