ten and severely bruised. When her husband took his
usual rest after the stormy dinner, smoked, read the paper and took a
little nap between whiles, she crept up to the nursery in which the boy
had been locked. Was he crying?

She turned the key softly--he was kneeling on the chair near the
window, his nose pressed flat against the pane, looking attentively out
at the snow. He did not notice her at all. Then she went away again
cautiously. She went downstairs again, but her mind was not
sufficiently at rest to read in her room; she crept about the house
softly as though she had no peace. Then she heard Lisbeth say to the
cook in the kitchen between the rattling of plates: "I shall certainly
not put up with it. Not from such a rude boy. What has he got to do
here?"

Kate stood rigid, overcome by a terror that paralysed her: what did
she know? She became glowing hot and then icy cold. "Not from such a
rude boy--what has he got to do here?" oh, God, was that the way she
spoke about him?

She ran up to the nursery; Woelfchen was still kneeling at the
window.

No other villa obstructed the view there as yet; from the window one
looked out on a large piece of waste ground, where dandelions and
nettles grew in the sand between hedge mustard in the summer time, but
where the snow lay now, deep and clean, untouched by any footstep. The
short winter evening was already drawing to a close, that white field
was the only thing that still glittered, and it seemed to the mother
that the child's face was very wan in the pale light of the luminous
snow.

"Woelfchen," she called softly. And then "Woelfchen, how could you say
'goose' and 'hold your tongue' to Lisbeth? Oh, for shame! Where did you
get those words from?" Her voice was gentle and sad as she questioned
him.

Then he turned round to her, and she saw how his eyes burned.
Something flickered in them, that looked like a terrified, restless
longing.

She noticed that as well, and quite against all rules of pedagogy
she opened her arms and whispered--after it had escaped from her lips
she did not know herself why she had said it, for he had everything,
everything his heart desired--"You poor child!"

And he ran into her arms.

They held each other tightly, heart beating against heart. They were
both sad, but neither of them knew the reason why, nor why the other
one was sad.

"It's not the whipping," he murmured.

She stroked his straight hair away from his forehea