“Ah, the sudden pang again,” he said.

His face was white, but it quickly regained its color. Then the old man busied himself in putting everything right.

“I will leave it neat. They shall not say I did not leave it neat,” he said. Even the little bags of seeds on the mantel-piece he put in rows and dusted. Then he undressed and got into bed. Under his pillow was a little story-book. He drew it forth. To the old German a story was no story. Its events were as real and as important to himself as the matters of his own life. He could not go away without knowing whether that wicked Earl relented, and whether the Baron married Emilina. So he adjusted his spectacles and began to read. Occasionally, as his feelings became too strongly moved, he ejaculated, “Ah, I thought so! — That was a rogue! I saw it before! — I knew it from the beginning!” More than half an hour had passed when he looked up to the silver watch at the top of his bed.

“The march is long to-morrow; this will not do,” he said, taking off his spectacles and putting them carefully into the book to mark the place. “This will be good reading as I walk along to-morrow,” he added, as he stuffed the book into the pocket of the great-coat; “very good reading.” He nodded his head and lay down. He thought a little of his own troubles, a good deal of the two little girls he was leaving, of the Earl, of Emilina, of the Baron; but he was soon asleep — sleeping as peacefully as a little child upon whose innocent soul sorrow and care cannot rest.

It was very quiet in the room. The coals in the fire-place threw a dull red light across the floor upon the red lions on the quilt. Eleven o’clock came, and the room was very still. One o’clock came. The glimmer had died out, though the ashes were still warm, and the room was very dark. The gray mouse, who had its hole under the tool-box, came out and sat on the sacks in the corner; then, growing bolder, the room was so dark, it climbed the chair at the bedside, nibbled at the roaster-cake, took one bite quickly at the candle, and then sat on his haunches listening. It heard the even breathing of the old man, and the steps of the hungry Kaffir dog going his last round in search of a bone or a skin that had been forgotten; and it heard the white hen call out as the wild cat ran away with one of her brood, and it heard the chicken cry. Then the gray mouse went back to its hole under the tool-box, and the room was quiet. And two o’clock came. By that time the night was grown dull and cloudy. The wild cat had gone to its home on the “kopje;” the Kaffir dog had found a bone, and lay gnawing it.