“I don't suspect that she incurs either much risk or fatigue, madam,” rejoined the other, “seeing that she is seated in an armchair, and carried by two of the stoutest fellows in Baden.” “But the exertion, in her weak state--” “She might make the ascent of Mont Blanc, madam, with the same appliances; and if you only told her that there were bargains to be had at the top, I verily believe she would do so.” “You don't think the things were cheap here, Colonel?” said Miss Martha, who thought by a diversion to draw Haggerstone away from so dangerous a discussion. “I am no connoisseur in Dutch dolls, nor Noah's arks, madam, although modern society presents us with something very like both; but I concluded that the prices were not exorbitant. I went there myself from a sense of equity. I once put a bullet into the little rascal's skin, and I have bought a salad-fork and a nut-crackers in requital.” “It was kindly thought of,” sighed Martha, gently. “They only cost me nine kreutzers, madam,” rejoined Haggerstone, who was more afraid of being thought a dupe than ill-natured, “so that my sense of generosity did not make a fool of me, as it did with the dwarf himself.” “How so?” “Why, in going security for that old Irishman, Dalton. It is to pay this debt that he has been sold out to-day, and I fancy that Swiss cottages and barking poodles will realize a very small dividend.” “Oh, Hanserl!” said Nelly, “what do I hear?” “Hush, Fräulein!” said he, with a gesture to enforce silence. “I will tell you of these things hereafter.” And now the others passed, and were soon out of hearing. “Oh, Hanserl!” cried Nelly, bitterly, “how misfortunes crowd upon me! It was but a moment back I was feeding my mind with the sad consolation that my griefs were all my own,--that the gloom of my dreary fortune cast no shadow on another; and now I see that I was wrong. _You_ must pay the dear penalty of having befriended us!--the fruits of all your hard years of industry!” “And you would rob me of their best reward,--the glorious sense of a generous action?” broke in Hans. “They _were_ years of toil and privation, and they might have been years of pleasure if avarice and greed had grown upon me; but I could not become a miser.” “The home you had made your own, lost to you forever!” sighed Nelly. “It was no longer a home when you left it.” “The well-won provision for old age, Hanserl.” “And has not this event made me young again, and able to brave the world, were it twice as adverse as ever I found it? Oh, Fräulein, you know not the heart-bounding ecstasy of him who, from the depths of an humble station, can rise to do a service to those he looks up to! And yet it is that thought which now warms my blood, and gives an energy to my nature that, even in youth, I never felt.”