We all loved her, for she lived peacefully and contentedly with all and caused nobody the least trouble. The house-dog alone, it seemed, would never trust her, he barked and tore furiously at the chain whenever she came across the home meadow. But the creature was meaning something quite different than we thought, all the time; for once when the chain broke he rushed to the woman, leapt whining into her bosom and licked her cheeks. At last in the late autumn, when Moss-Maggie was almost always in the graveyard, there came a time when, instead of barking cheerily, the dog howled by the hour together, so that my grandmother, herself very worn and weary by then, said, "You mark my words; there'll soon be somebody dying in our neighbourhood now, when the dog howls like that! God comfort the poor soul!" And a little while after that Moss-Maggie fell ill, and when winter came she died. * * * * * In her last moments she held both my father and mother by the hand and uttered the words, "May God requite you a thousand and a thousandfold, right up into heaven itself!" FOOTNOTES: [3] A morning service of the Catholic Church held during Advent. [4] In God's name let us arise Towards God to go, Towards God to take our way, To the Heavenly Father to pray, That He lend to us Dear little angels three: The first to guide us, The second to feed us, The third to shelter and protect us That nothing mischance us in body or soul. [5] The birchen Lizzie--_Die birkene Liesel_. IV A Last Will and Testament When of a Saturday evening my father sat at his shaving I had to creep under the table because it was dangerous above. When my father sat shaving himself, and when he had lathered his cheek and lips to such a snowy whiteness that he looked like the herd-boy after he has been lapping cream behind the milkmaid's back; when, further, he sharpened his gleaming razor on his brown-leather braces and then passed it slowly over his cheek, he would straightway begin to twist mouth, cheeks, and nose--indeed, his whole countenance--in such a fashion as made his dear kind face quite unrecognisable. He drew both lips deep into his mouth, till he was like nothing so much as old neighbour Veit who had lost all his teeth; or he stretched his mouth crosswise, from left to right, like Köhler-Sani scolding his hens; and he screwed one eye up tight and blew out a cheek, for all the world like poor Tinili the tailor, after his virago wife had been caressing him. All the funniest faces in the whole neighbourhood came to my mind in turn when my father sat at his shaving. And that set me off.