As time went on, Christine's sorrows came to be of a more instant sort. Her too jolly husband's fondness for heady beer grew upon him, and with its increase came a decrease in the success that until then had been attendent upon his sausage-making. His business fell away from him by degrees into soberer and steadier hands, which had the effect of making him take to stronger drinks than beer in order that he might the more effectually forget his troubles. He lost his merriness, and somewhat of his loudness, and became sullen; and the wolf always was shrewdly near the door. Thus, in a very bad way indeed, things went on for half a dozen years; then the big Conrad, what with drink and worry, fell ill--so ill, that for a long while he lay close to the open jaws of Death. No one ever knew--though several people quite accurately guessed--why the wolf did not fairly get into the house during that dismal time. It is certain that when Conrad arose from his bed at last, a thin remnant of his former bigness, there were few high-priced birds left in Andreas Stoffel's little shop, where there had been a score or more when his sickness began. And, possibly, it was something more than a mere coincidence that nearly all of the few which remained were sold about the time that Conrad started again, in a very humble way, his business of sausage-making. But if Andreas did thus sacrifice his birds for Christine's good, he did not grudge the sacrifice; for upon the big Conrad poverty and sickness had exercised a chastening and most wholesome influence. He got up out of his bed a changed man; and the change, morally at least, was greatly for the better. Physically the result was less salutary; indeed, he never quite recovered from his sharp attack; and three or four years later, just as his business was getting into good shape again, he sickened suddenly, and then promptly paid to nature the debt that all men owe, and that his partial return to health had but a little time delayed. But Christine was not left desolate in the world, for in the last year of her husband's life the strong yearning that so possessed her had been satisfied, and she was the mother of a baby girl. Andreas, claiming the fulfilment of the promise made so long before, had stood godfather to the little Rosa--for so, because of her fresh rosiness, was she named; and there was a strange, sorrowful longing in his heart when, the rite being ended, he came again to his lonely home and sat him down to be comforted by the singing of his birds: for while the children of Alice call Bartram father, there must be ever a weary weight of sadness in the world.