The mother sat down at the edge of the ditch, and looked across at their sad home to which all her care was devoted. The outlines of the buildings stood out clearly against the evening sky. One lonely light twinkled from the kitchen. Suddenly she spread out her arms, and called out over the silent heath, “Oh, I am happy!” Paul clung to her side almost anxiously, for never yet had he heard a similar cry from her. He was so much accustomed to her tears and her sorrow that this exultant joy seemed to him quite uncanny. And then it occurred to him: “What will father say when he hears of this walk? Will he not scold mother and be even more angry with her than usual?” A sullen defiance took possession of him; he set his teeth, then he stroked his mother’s hand consolingly, kissed her, and whispered, “He shall not harm you!” “Who?” she asked, with a shudder. “Father,” he said, softly and hesitatingly. She sighed deeply but answered nothing, and silently and sadly they went on. The gray woman had flitted across their path and spoiled the moment of joy, and it was the only one that Fate had still in store for Frau Elsbeth. Next day there was a bad hour between herself and her husband. He called her undutiful and dishonorable. By her begging she had added disgrace to poverty. However, he took the money. CHAPTER V. Years passed away. Paul grew up a quiet, unpretending boy, with a shy look and awkward behavior. Generally he kept apart, and, while he took care of the twins, would sit for hours working at some wood-carving without saying a single word. He was what one calls in his part of the country “fussy:” a nature inclined to worry about details and brooding anxiously by himself. He had no intercourse with any boys of his age, not even in school. Not that he avoided them on purpose; on the contrary, he liked to help them, and more than one used to copy, in the morning before prayers, his arithmetic problems or his German composition; but their interests were not his, and therefore he could not befriend them. He also got an abundance of thrashings; especially from the brothers Erdmann--two saucy, wild-eyed fellows, loved and feared as the strongest and most daring--he had much to suffer. They were inexhaustible in the invention of new tricks which imbittered his life: they threw his copy-books on the top of the stove, filled his satchel with sand, and let his cap, in which they put a stick for a mast, float down the river like a boat. Most of these injuries he bore patiently; only once or twice a blind fury came over him. Then he bit and scratched like a madman, so that even those companions who were much stronger than he wisely took to flight. The first time one of the boys had called his father a drunkard, and another time they wanted to lock him up in a dark cow-shed with a little girl.