The boy breathed deep when he had relieved himself of the fearful burden of his message. Albert took up his cap. "I'll come directly. You run on and tell her I am coming directly. And look here: If anybody in the house asks you whom you come from, just say you have delivered your message. Here is a groschen, and now make haste to get home again." The boy scampered off, proud of Albert's generous present, and of course utterly forgetful of the order to run home. When he had reached the courtyard, he sat quietly down on the fountain of the Naiad, to decide at leisure whether he should buy at once the whole world, or for the present only a bullfinch, which another boy had offered him that morning. He might have been sitting there a quarter of an hour when he fell fast asleep, tired as he was from running about all day. Thus Oswald found him when he returned from a lonely walk. As the sight of the ragged sleeping boy on the edge of the fountain looked picturesque, he walked up to him. The boy started up and rubbed his eyes in bewilderment. "How do you get here, boy?" asked Oswald. "Mother Claus sent me!" said the boy, not knowing at that moment whether he had delivered his message or not. "What is the matter with Mother Claus?" asked Oswald, who at once suspected that something must have happened to his old friend. "Mother Claus sends me," repeated the boy; "she is dying, and sends me to tell the candidate to come and see her!" Oswald did not stop to hear more. He thought of the poor old woman, in whom he had from the beginning taken so warm an interest, now lying on her deathbed, perhaps alone, helpless, and no kind hand to smooth her pillow--and he hurried as fast as he could through the small gate on the road that led to the tenants' cottages, taking the same road on which Albert had passed a quarter of an hour before.... Albert had slipped through the small gate and the garden as soon as the boy was out of sight. No one had seen him leave the château. The family had gone out, and he thought Oswald was in his room. "_Fortes fortuna juvat_," he thought as he was running along under the willow trees. "They are all out in the fields now. The old woman could not have died at a more suitable hour. I only hope she is dead when I get there, for I do not want to have to explain...." He had reached the village in a few minutes, but he avoided the main street, running along the little gardens behind the cottages, till he came to Mother Claus' hut. Here he jumped over a low fence and entered through the open back door into the passage. He listened. Nothing was stirring. He only heard the ticking of the large Black Forest clock in Jake's room, and from the village street the laughter of a couple of children--Mother Claus' foster-children--who were wrestling in the sand to enjoy the evening sun.