To-night, 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 anyone 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 profound satisfaction therein. “Bish! bish! my chicken,” he said, as Lyndall tapped her little foot up and down upon the floor. “Bish! bish! my chicken, you will wake him.”

He moved the candle so that his own head might intervene between it and the sleeper’s face; and, smoothing his newspaper, he adjusted his spectacles to read.

The child’s gray-black eyes rested on the figure on the bed, then turned to the German, then rested on the figure again.

“I think he is a liar. Good night, Uncle Otto,” she said slowly, turning to the door.

Long after she had gone the German folded his paper up methodically, and put it in his pocket.

The stranger had not awakened to partake of the soup, and his son had fallen asleep on the ground. Taking two white sheep-skins from the heap of sacks in the corner, the old man doubled them up, and lifting the boy’s head gently from the slate on which it rested, placed the skins beneath it.

“Poor lambie, poor lambie,” he said tenderly patting the great rough bear-like head; “tired, is he!”