lived in them; there, in that little
twinkling point was perhaps the little girl whose stockings he had
carried home; and the children would look up at it lovingly, and call it
"Uncle Otto's star." Then they would fall to deeper speculations--of
the times and seasons wherein the heavens shall be rolled together as
a scroll, and the stars shall fall as a fig-tree casteth her untimely
figs, and there shall be time no longer: "When the Son of man shall
come in His glory, and all His holy angels with Him." In lower and lower
tones they would talk, till at last they fell into whispers; then they
would wish good night softly, and walk home hushed and quiet.

Tonight, when Lyndall looked in, Waldo sat before the fire watching a
pot which simmered there, with his slate and pencil in his hand; his
father sat at the table buried in the columns of a three-weeks-old
newspaper; and the stranger lay stretched on the bed in the corner,
fast asleep, his mouth open, his great limbs stretched out loosely,
betokening much weariness. The girl put the rations down upon the table,
snuffed the candle, and stood looking at the figure on the bed.

"Uncle Otto," she said presently, laying her hand down on the newspaper,
and causing the old German to look up over his glasses, "how long did
that man say he had been walking?"

"Since this morning, poor fellow! A gentleman--not accustomed to
walking--horse died--poor fellow!" said the German, pushing out his lip
and glancing commiseratingly over his spectacles in the direction of
the bed where the stranger lay, with his flabby double chin, and broken
boots through which the flesh shone.

"And do you believe him, Uncle Otto?"

"Believe him? why of course I do. He himself told me the story three
times distinctly."

"If," said the girl slowly, "he had walked for only one day his boots
would not have looked so; and if--"

"If!" said the German starting up in his chair, irritated that any one
should doubt such irrefragable evidence--"if! Why, he told me himself!
Look how he lies there," added the German pathetically, "worn out--poor
fellow! We have something for him though," pointing with his forefinger
over his shoulder to the saucepan that stood on the fire. "We are not
cooks--not French cooks, not quite; but it's drinkable, drinkable, I
think; better than nothing, I think," he added, nodding his head in a
jocund manner that evinced his high estimation of the contents of
the saucepan and his pr