A little book, consisting of a few sheets of gray paper stitched together, lay beside the money; the father's hand had filled the first pages with letters and figures but then death had closed worthy Master Anton's account and for many years now the mother had done the bookkeeping, by faith, without letters and figures, and the account still balanced. How often had Christine Unwirrsch gone hungry to bed, how often had she suffered all possible hardships without yielding to the temptation to reach out her hand for the black box! In every form distress had approached her in her miserable widowhood, but she had resisted with heroism. Even without letters and figures, she could render her account at any moment;--it was not her fault if the happy, honorable future which the dead man had dreamt of for his son did not rise out of the black box. Mrs. Christine sat in front of the table for more than an hour that night, counting on her fingers and calculating, while across the street in a little back room of the junk-dealer's house a man also sat figuring and counting. Samuel Freudenstein, too, was sitting up for his sleeping boy's sake. More than a few rolls of gold pieces, more than a few rolls of silver pieces lay before him; he had more to throw into his child's scales of fortune than the poor widow. "I will arm him with everything that is a weapon," he murmured. "They shall find him prepared in every way, and he shall laugh at them. He shall become a great man; he shall have everything that he wants. I was a slave, he shall be a master among a strange people, and I will live in his life. He has a good head, a sharp eye; he will make his way. He shall think of his father when he has reached the height; I will live in his life." The widow divided her scanty day's wages into two parts. The greater part fell into the oak box and was added to the other savings of long years of toil, and the small coins gave a clear ring. Samuel Freudenstein added more than a hundred shining thalers to his son's fortune; no one in Kröppel Street as much as suspected what a rich man the junk-dealer had again gradually grown to be. The moonlight had entirely disappeared from the widow's bedroom when she crept shiveringly back from the living room. Hans Unwirrsch still slept soundly and not even the kiss that his mother pressed on his forehead waked him. The lamp too went out and Mrs. Christine soon slept as peacefully as her child. About the bed of King Solomon stood sixty strong men with swords in their hands, skilled in battle, "for the sake of the fear in the night;" but at the head of the widow and her child there stood a spirit that kept better watch than all the armed men in Israel.