“Do you know what that is, Father?” asked Hans. Raff Brinker’s face brightened. “Indeed I do, boy! It is the boat I was making you yest--alack, not yesterday, but years ago.” “I have kept it ever since, Father. It can be finished when your hand grows strong again.” “Yes, but not for you, my lad. I must wait for the grandchildren. Why, you are nearly a man. Have you helped your mother through all these years?” “Aye and bravely,” put in Dame Brinker. “Let me see,” muttered the father, looking in a puzzled way at them all, “how long is it since the night when the waters were coming in? ‘Tis the last I remember.” “We have told thee true, Raff. It was ten years last Pinxter week.” “Ten years--and I fell then, you say? Has the fever been on me ever since?” Dame Brinker scarcely knew how to reply. Should she tell him all? Tell him that he had been an idiot, almost a lunatic? The doctor had charged her on no account to worry or excite his patient. Hans and Gretel looked astonished. “Like enough, Raff,” she said, nodding her head and raising her eyebrows. “When a heavy man like thee falls on his head, it’s hard to say what will come--but thou’rt well NOW, Raff. Thank the good Lord!” The newly awakened man bowed his head. “Aye, well enough, mine vrouw,” he said after a moment’s silence, “but my brain turns somehow like a spinning wheel. It will not be right till I get on the dikes again. When shall I be at work, think you?” “Hear the man!” cried Dame Brinker, delighted, yet frightened, too, for that matter. “We must get him on the bed, Hans. Work indeed!” They tried to raise him from the chair, but he was not ready yet. “Be off with ye!” he said with something like his old smile (Gretel had never seen it before). “Does a man want to be lifted about like a log? I tell you before three suns I shall be on the dikes again. Ah! There’ll be some stout fellows to greet me. Jan Kamphuisen and young Hoogsvliet. They have been good friends to thee, Hans, I’ll warrant.” Hans looked at his mother. Young Hoogsvliet had been dead five years. Jan Kamphuisen was in the jail at Amsterdam. “Aye, they’d have done their share no doubt,” said Dame Brinker, parrying the inquiry, “had we asked them. But what with working and studying, Hans has been busy enough without seeking comrades.” “Working and studying,” echoed Raff, in a musing tone. “Can the youngsters read and cipher, Meitje?” “You should hear them!” she answered proudly. “They can run through a book while I mop the floor. Hans there is as happy over a page of big words as a rabbit in a cabbage patch; as for ciphering--” “Here, lad, help a bit,” interrupted Raff Brinker. “I must get me on the bed again.” The Thousand Guilders