To the old man's left sits the youngest, probably a grandson, a young man with glossy black hair and a burning, restless glance. He also is looking at a book, but the book is quite small, and he holds it close to his bright, unquiet eyes. He continually lowers it, however, and throws a glance of mingled fear and respect at the old man, another, with a half-ironic smile, at his father, and then leans over to hear what is going on, on the further side of the curtain. And from the further side of the curtain come moans as of a woman in child-birth-- I am about to cough, so that they may be aware of me. At this moment a fold of the curtain is pushed aside and there appear two women: an old one with a sharp, bony face and sharp eyes, and one of middle age with a gentle, rather flabby face and uncertain glance. They stand looking at the men, and waiting to be questioned. The oldest does not see them--his soul has melted into the soul of the book. The middle-aged man has seen them, and is wondering how best to rouse his father; the youngest starts up-- "Mother! Grandmother! Well?" The father rises anxiously from his chair; the grandfather only pushes the book a little away from him, and lifts his eyes to the women. "How is she?" inquires the young one further, with a trembling voice. "She is over it!" "Over it! over it!" stammers the young one. "Mother, won't you say, Good luck to you?" asks the second. The old one reflects a moment and then asks: "What has happened? Even if it is a girl--" "No!"--the grandmother speaks for the first time--"it is a boy." "Still-born?" "No, it lives!" answers the old woman, and yet there is no joy in her tone. "A cripple? Defective?" "It has marks! On both shoulders--" "What sort of marks?" "Of wings--" "Of wings?" "Yes, of wings, and they are growing--" The old man remains sitting in perplexity, the second is lost in wonder, the youngest fairly leaps for joy. "Good, good! Let them grow, may they grow into wings, big, strong ones! Good, good!" "What is there to be glad about?" inquires his father. "A dreadful deformity!" sighs the old man. "Why so?" asks the grandson. "Wings," said the old man, sternly, "raise one into the height--when one has wings one cannot keep to the earth." "Much it matters!" retorts the grandson, defiantly. "One is quit of living here and wallowing in the mud, one lives in the height. Is heaven not better than earth?" The old man grows pale, and the son takes up the word: "Foolish child! What is one to live on in the height? Air doesn't go far. There are no inns to hire up there, no 'contracts' to sign. There's no one of whom to buy a bit of shoe-leather--in the height--"