"I could have seen them with that franc," he murmured to Patrasche, "but
I could not sell her picture--not even for them."

Baas Cogez went into his mill-house sore troubled in his mind. "That
lad must not be so much with Alois," he said to his wife that night.
"Trouble may come of it hereafter; he is fifteen now, and she is twelve;
and the boy is comely of face and form."

"And he is a good lad and a loyal," said the housewife, feasting her
eyes on the piece of pine wood where it was throned above the chimney
with a cuckoo clock in oak and a Calvary in wax.

"Yea, I do not gainsay that," said the miller, draining his pewter
flagon.

"Then, if what you think of were ever to come to pass," said the wife,
hesitatingly, "would it matter so much? She will have enough for both,
and one cannot be better than happy."

"You are a woman, and therefore a fool," said the miller, harshly,
striking his pipe on the table. "The lad is naught but a beggar, and,
with these painter's fancies, worse than a beggar. Have a care that they
are not together in the future, or I will send the child to the surer
keeping of the nuns of the Sacred Heart."

The poor mother was terrified, and promised humbly to do his will. Not
that she could bring herself altogether to separate the child from
her favorite playmate, nor did the miller even desire that extreme of
cruelty to a young lad who was guilty of nothing except poverty. But
there were many ways in which little Alois was kept away from her chosen
companion; and Nello, being a boy proud and quiet and sensitive,
was quickly wounded, and ceased to turn his own steps and those of
Patrasche, as he had been used to do with every moment of leisure, to
the old red mill upon the slope. What his offence was he did not know;
he supposed he had in some manner angered Baas Cogez by taking the
portrait of Alois in the meadow; and when the child who loved him would
run to him and nestle her hand in his, he would smile at her very sadly
and say with a tender concern for her before himself, "Nay, Alois, do
not anger your father. He thinks that I make you idle, dear, and he is
not pleased that you should be with me. He is a good man and loves you
well; we will not anger him, Alois."

But it was with a sad heart that he said it, and the earth did not look
so bright to him as it had used to do when he went out at sunrise under
the poplars down the straight roads with Patrasche. The old red mill had
been a landmark to him, and he had been used to pause by it, going and
coming, for a cheery greeting with its people as her little flaxen head
rose above the low mill wicket, and her little rosy hands had held out
a bone or a crust to Patrasche. Now the dog looked wistfully at a closed
door, and the boy went on without pausing, with a pang at his heart, and
the child sat within with tears dropping slowly on the knitting to which
she was set on her little stool by the stove; and Baas Cogez, working
among his sacks and his mill-gear, would harden his will and say to
himself, "It is best so. The lad is all but a beggar, and full of idle,
dreaming fooleries. Who knows what mischief might not come of it in the
future?" So he was wise in his generation, and would not have the door
unbarred, except upon rare and formal occasions, which seemed to have
neither warmth nor mirth in them to the two children, who had been
accustomed so long to a daily gleeful, careless, happy interchange of
greeting, speech, and pastime, with no other watcher of their sports or
auditor of their fancies than Patrasche, sagely shaking the brazen bells
of his collar and responding with all a dog's swift sympathies to their
every change of mood.

All this while the little panel of pine wood remained over the chimney
in the mill kitchen with the cuckoo clock and the waxen Calvary; and
sometimes it seemed to Nello a little hard that while his gift was
accepted, he himself should be denied.

But he did not complain; it was his habit to be quiet. Old Jehan Daas
had said ever to him, "We are poor; we must take what God sends--the ill
with the good; the poor cannot choose."

To which the boy had always listened in silence, being reverent of his
old grandfather; but nevertheless a certain vague, sweet hope, such as
beguiles the children of genius, had whispered in his heart, "Yet the
poor do choose sometimes--choose to be great, so that men cannot say
them nay." And he thought so still in his innocence; and one day, when
the little Alois, finding him by chance alone among the corn-fields by
the canal, ran to him and held him close, and sobbed piteously because
the morrow would be her saint's day, and for the first time in all her
life her parents had failed to bid him to the little supper and romp in
the great barns with which her feast-day was always celebrated, Nello
had kissed her and murmured to her in firm faith, "It shall be different
one day, Alois. One day that little bit of pine wood that your father
has of mine shall be worth its weight in silver; and he will not shut
the door against me then. Only love me always, dear little Alois; only
love me always, and I will be great."

"And if I do not love you?" the pretty child asked, pouting a little
through her tears, and moved by the instinctive coquetries of her sex.

Nello's eyes left her face and wandered to the distance, where, in the
red and gold of the Flemish night, the cathedral spire rose. There was a
smile on his face so sweet and yet so sad that little Alois was awed by
it. "I will be great still," he said under his breath--"great still, or
die, Alois."

"You do not love me," said the little spoiled child, pushing him away;
but the boy shook his head and smiled, and went on his way through the
tall yellow corn, seeing as in a vision some day in a fair future when
he should come into that old familiar land and ask Alois of her people,
and be not refused or denied, but received in honour; while the village
folk should throng to look upon him and say in one another's ears, "Dost
see him? He is a king among men; for he is a great artist and the world
speaks his name; and yet he was only our poor little Nello, who was a
beggar, as one may say, and only got his bread by the help of his dog."
And he thought how he would fold his grandsire in furs and purples, and
portray him as the old man is portrayed in the Family in the chapel of
St. Jacques; and of how he would hang the throat of Patrasche with a
collar of gold, and place him on his right hand, and say to the people,
"This was once my only friend;" and of how he would build himself a
great white marble palace, and make to himself luxuriant gardens of
pleasure, on the slope looking outward to where the cathedral spire
rose, and not dwell in it himself, but summon to it, as to a home, all
men young and poor and friendless, but of the will to do mighty things;
and of how he would say to them always, if they sought to bless his
name, "Nay, do not thank me--thank Rubens. Without him, what should I
have been?" And these dreams--beautiful, impossible, innocent, free of
all selfishness, full of heroical worship--were so closely about him as
he went that he was happy--happy even on this sad anniversary of Alois's
saint's day, when he and Patrasche went home by themselves to the little
dark hut and the meal of black bread, while in the mill-house all the
children of the village sang and laughed, and ate the big round cakes
of Dijon and the almond gingerbread of Brabant, and danced in the great
barn to the light of the stars and the music of flute and fiddle.

"Never mind, Patrasche," he said, with his arms round the dog's neck, as
they both sat in the door of the hut, where the sounds of the mirth at
the mill came down to them on the night air; "never mind. It shall all
be changed by-and-by."

He believed in the future; Patrasche, of more experience and of more
philosophy, thought that the loss of the mill supper in the present was
ill compensated by dreams of milk and honey in some vague hereafter. And
Patrasche growled whenever he passed by Baas Cogez.

"This is Alois's name-day, is it not?" said the old man Daas that night,
from the corner where he was stretched upon his bed of sacking.

The boy gave a gesture of assent; he wished that the old man's memory
had erred a little, instead of keeping such sure account.

"And why not there?" his grandfather pursued. "Thou hast never missed a
year before, Nello."

"Thou art too sick to leave," murmured the lad, bending his handsome
head over the bed.

"Tut! tut! Mother Nulette would have come and sat with me, as she does
scores of times. What is the cause, Nello?" the old man persisted. "Thou
surely hast not had ill words with the little one?"

"Nay, grandfather, never," said the boy quickly, with a hot colour in
his bent face. "Simply and truly, Baas Cogez did not have me asked this
year. He has taken some whim against me."

"But thou hast done nothing wrong?"

"That I know--nothing. I took the portrait of Alois on a piece of pine;
that is all."

"Ah!" The old man was silent; the truth suggested itself to him with
the boy's innocent answer. He was tied to a bed of dried leaves in the
corner of a wattle hut, but he had not wholly forgotten what the ways of
the world were like.

He drew Nello's fair head fondly to his breast with a tenderer gesture.
"Thou art very poor, my child," he said, with a quiver the more in his
aged, trembling voice; "so poor! It is very hard for thee."

"Nay, I am rich," murmured Nello; and in his innocence he thought so;
rich with the imperishable powers that are mightier than the might of
kings. And he went and stood by the door of the hut in the quiet autumn
night, and watched the stars troop by and the tall poplars bend and
shiver in the wind. All the casements of the mill-house were lighted,
and every now and then the notes of the flute came to him. The tears
fell down his cheeks, for he was but a child; yet he smiled, for he said
to himself, "In the future!" He stayed there until all was quite still
and dark; then he and Patrasche went within and slept together, long and
deeply, side by side.

Now he had a secret which only Patrasche knew. There was a little
outhouse to the hut which no one entered but himself--a dreary place,
but with abundant clear light from the north. Here he had fashioned
himself rudely an easel in rough lumber, and here, on a great gray sea
of stretched paper, he had given shape to one of the innumerable fancies
which possessed his brain. No one had ever taught him anything; colours
he had no means to buy; he had gone without bread many a time to procure
even the few rude vehicles that he had here; and it was only in black or
white that he could fashion the things he saw. This great figure which
he had drawn here in chalk was only an old man sitting on a fallen
tree--only that. He had seen old Michel, the woodman, sitting so at
evening many a time. He had never had a soul to tell him of outline
or perspective, of anatomy or of shadow; and yet he had given all
the weary, worn-out age, all the sad, quiet patience, all the rugged,
care-worn pathos of his original, and given them so that the old, lonely
figure was a poem, sitting there meditative and alone, on the dead tree,
with the darkness of the descending night behind him.

It was rude, of course, in a way, and had many faults, no doubt; and yet
it was real, true in nature, true in art, and very mournful, and in a
manner beautiful.

Patrasche had lain quiet countless hours watching its gradual creation
after the labor of each day was done, and he knew that Nello had a
hope--vain and wild perhaps, but strongly cherished--of sending this
great drawing to compete for a prize of two hundred francs a year
which it was announced in Antwerp would be open to every lad of talent,
scholar or peasant, under eighteen, who would attempt to win it with
some unaided work of chalk or pencil. Three of the foremost artists in
the town of Rubens were to be the judges and elect the victor according
to his merits.

All the spring and summer and autumn Nello had been at work upon this
treasure, which if triumphant, would build him his first step toward
independence and the mysteries of the art which he blindly, ignorantly,
and yet passionately adored.

He said nothing to any one; his grandfather would not have understood,
and little Alois was lost to him. Only to Patrasche he told all, and
whispered, "Rubens would give it me, I think, if he knew."

Patrasche thought so too, for he knew that Rubens had loved dogs or he
had never painted them with such exquisite fidelity; and men who loved
dogs were, as Patrasche knew, always pitiful.

The drawings were to go in on the first day of December, and the
decision be given on the twenty-fourth, so that he who should win might
rejoice with all his people at the Christmas season.

In the twilight of a bitter wintry day, and with a beating heart, now
quick with hope, now faint with fear, Nello placed the great picture
on his little green milk-cart, and took it, with the help of Patrasche,
into the town, and there left it, as enjoined, at the doors of a public
building.

"Perhaps it is worth nothing at all. How can I tell?" he thought, with
the heart-sickness of a great timidity. Now that he had left it there,
it seemed to him so hazardous, so vain, so foolish, to dream that he, a
little lad with bare feet who barely knew his letters, could do anything
at which great painters, real artists, could ever deign to look. Yet he
took heart as he went by the cathedral; the lordly form of Rubens seemed
to rise from the fog and the darkness, and to loom in its magnificence
before him, while the lips, with their kindly smile, seemed to him to
murmur, "Nay, have courage! It was not by a weak heart and by faint
fears that I wrote my name for all time upon Antwerp."

Nello ran home through the cold night, comforted. He had done his
best; the rest must be as God willed, he thought, in that innocent,
unquestioning faith which had been taught him in the little gray chapel
among the willows and the poplar-trees.

The winter was very sharp already. That night, after they reached the
hut, snow fell, and fell for very many days after that; so that the
paths and the divisions in the fields were all obliterated, and all
the smaller streams were frozen over, and the cold was intense upon the
plains. Then, indeed, it became hard work to go round for the milk while
the world was all dark, and carry it through the darkness to the silent
town. Hard work, especially for Patrasche, for the passage of the years
that were only bringing Nello a stronger youth were bringing him old
age, and his joints were stiff and his bones ached often. But he would
never give up his share of the labour. Nello would fain have spared him
and drawn the cart himself, but Patrasche would not allow it. All he
would ever permit or accept was the help of a thrust from behind to the
truck as it lumbered along through the ice-ruts. Patrasche had lived in
harness, and he was proud of it. He suffered a great deal sometimes from
frost and the terrible roads and the rheumatic pains of his limbs; but
he only drew his breath hard and bent his stout neck, and trod onward
with steady patience.

"Rest thee at home, Patrasche; it is time thou didst rest, and I can
quite well push in the cart by myself," urged Nello many a morning; but
Patrasche, who understood him aright, would no more have consented
to stay at home than a veteran soldier to shirk when the charge was
sounding; and every day he would rise and place himself in his shafts,
and plod along over the snow through the fields that his four round feet
had left their print upon so many, many years.

"One must never rest till one dies," thought Patrasche; and sometimes it
seemed to him that that time of rest for him was not very far off. His
sight was less clear than it had been, and it gave him pain to rise
after the night's sleep, though he would never lie a moment in his straw
when once the bell of the chapel tolling five let him know that the
daybreak of labor had begun.

"My poor Patrasche, we shall soon lie quiet together, you and I," said
old Jehan Daas, stretching out to stroke the head of Patrasche with the
old withered hand which had always shared with him its one poor crust of
bread; and the hearts of the old man and the old dog ached together with
one thought: When they were gone who would care for their darling?

One afternoon, as they came back from Antwerp over the snow, which had
become hard and smooth as marble over all the Flemish plains, they found
dropped in the road a pretty little puppet, a tambourine player, all
scarlet and gold, about six inches high, and, unlike greater personages
when Fortune lets them drop, quite unspoiled and unhurt by its fall. It
was a pretty toy. Nello tried to find its owner, and, failing, thought
that it was just the thing to please Alois.

It was quite night when he passed the mill-house; he knew the little
window of her room; it could be no harm, he thought, if he gave her
his little piece of treasure-trove--they had been play-fellows so long.
There was a shed with a sloping roof beneath her casement; he climbed it
and tapped softly at the lattice; there was a little light within. The
child opened it and looked out half frightened.

Nello put the tambourine player into her hands. "Here is a doll I found
in the snow, Alois. Take it," he whispered; "take it, and God bless
thee, dear!"

He slid down from the shed roof before she had time to thank him, and
ran off through the darkness.

That night there was a fire at the mill. Out-buildings and much corn
were destroyed, although the mill itself and the dwelling-house were
unharmed. All the village was out in terror, and engines came tearing
through the snow from Antwerp. The miller was insured, and would lose
nothing; nevertheless, he was in furious wrath, and declared aloud that
the fire was due to no accident, but to some foul intent.

Nello, awakened from his sleep, ran to help with the rest. Baas Cogez
thrust him angrily aside. "Thou wert loitering here after dark," he said
roughly. "I believe, on my soul, that thou dost know more of the fire
than any one."

Nello heard him in silence, stupefied, not supposing that any one could
say such things except in jest, and not comprehending how any one could
pass a jest at such a time.

Nevertheless, the miller said the brutal thing openly to many of his
neighbours in the day that followed; and though no serious charge was
ever preferred against the lad, it got bruited about that Nello had been
seen in the mill-yard after dark on some unspoken errand, and that he
bore Baas Cogez a grudge for forbidding his intercourse with little
Alois; and so the hamlet, which followed the sayings of its richest
landowner servilely, and whose families all hoped to secure the riches
of Alois in some future time for their sons, took the hint to give grave
looks and cold words to old Jehan Daas's grandson. No one said anything
to him openly, but all the village agreed together to humour the
miller's prejudice, and at the cottages and farms where Nello and
Patrasche called every morning for the milk for Antwerp, downcast
glances and brief phrases replaced to them the broad smiles and cheerful
greetings to which they had been always used. No one really credited the
miller's absurd suspicions, nor the outrageous accusations born of them;
but the people were all very poor and very ignorant, and the one rich
man of the place had pronounced against him. Nello, in his innocence and
his friendlessness, had no strength to stem the popular tide.

"Thou art very cruel to the lad," the miller's wife dared to say,
weeping, to her lord. "Sure, he is an innocent lad and a faithful, and
would never dream of any such wickedness, however sore his heart might
be."

But Baas Cogez being an obstinate man, having once said a thing, held
to it doggedly, though in his innermost soul he knew well the injustice
that he was committing.

Meanwhile, Nello endured the injury done against him with a certain
proud patience that disdained to complain; he only gave way a little
when he was quite alone with old Patrasche. Besides, he thought, "If it
should win! They will be sorry then, perhaps."

Still, to a boy not quite sixteen, and who had dwelt in one little world
all his short life, and in his childhood had been caressed and applauded
on all sides, it was a hard trial to have the whole of that little world
turn against him for naught. Especially hard in that bleak, snow-bound,
famine-stricken winter-time, when the only light and warmth there could
be found abode beside the village hearths and in the kindly greetings
of neighbours. In the winter-time all drew nearer to each other, all
to all, except to Nello and Patrasche, with whom none now would have
anything to do, and who were left to fare as they might with the old
paralyzed, bedridden man in the little cabin, whose fire was often low,
and whose board was often without bread; for there was a buyer from
Antwerp who had taken to drive his mule in of a day for the milk of the
various dairies, and there were only three or four of the people who had
refused his terms of purchase and remained faithful to the little green
cart. So that the burden which Patrasche drew had become very light,
and the centime pieces in Nello's pouch had become, alas! very small
likewise.

The dog would stop, as usual, at all the familiar gates which were now
closed to him, and look up at them with wistful, mute appeal; and it
cost the neighbours a pang to shut their doors and their hearts, and let
Patrasche draw his cart on again, empty. Nevertheless, they did it, for
they desired to please Baas Cogez.

Noel was close at hand.

The weather was very wild and cold; the snow was six feet deep, and the
ice was firm enough to bear oxen and men upon it everywhere. At this
season the little village was always gay and cheerful. At the poorest
dwelling there were possets and cakes, joking and dancing, sugared
saints and gilded Jesus. The merry Flemish bells jingled everywhere on
the horses; everywhere within doors some well-filled soup-pot sang and
smoked over the stove; and everywhere over the snow without laughing
maidens pattered in bright kerchiefs and stout kirtles, going to and
from the mass. Only in the little hut it was very dark and very cold.

Nello and Patrasche were left utterly alone, for one night in the week
before the Christmas Day, death entered there, and took away from life
forever old Jehan Daas, who had never known life aught save its poverty
and its pains. He had long been half dead, incapable of any movement
except a feeble gesture, and powerless for anything beyond a gentle
word; and yet his loss fell on them both with a great horror in it; they
mourned him passionately. He had passed away from them in his sleep,
and when in the gray dawn they learned their bereavement, unutterable
solitude and desolation seemed to close around them. He had long been
only a poor, feeble, paralyzed old man, who could not raise a hand in
their defence; but he had loved them well, his smile had always
welcomed their return. They mourned for him unceasingly, refusing to be
comforted, as in the white winter day they followed the deal shell that
held his body to the nameless grave by the little gray church. They were
his only mourners, these two whom he had left friendless upon earth--the
young boy and the old dog.

"Surely, he will relent now and let the poor lad come hither?" thought
the miller's wife, glancing at her husband where he smoked by the
hearth.

Baas Cogez knew her thought, but he hardened his heart, and would not
unbar his door as the little, humble funeral went by. "The boy is a
beggar," he said to himself; "he shall not be about Alois."

The woman dared not say anything aloud, but when the grave was closed
and the mourners had gone, she put a wreath of immortelles into Alois's
hands and bade her go and lay it reverently on the dark, unmarked mound
where the snow was displaced.

Nello and Patrasche went home with broken hearts. But even of that poor,
melancholy, cheerless home they were denied the consolation. There was a
month's rent overdue for their little home, and when Nello had paid the
last sad service to the dead he had not a coin left. He went and begged
grace of the owner of the hut, a cobbler who went every Sunday night
to drink his pint of wine and smoke with Baas Cogez. The cobbler would
grant no mercy. He was a harsh, miserly man, and loved money. He claimed
in default of his rent every stick and stone, every pot and pan, in the
hut, and bade Nello and Patrasche be out of it on the morrow.

Now, the cabin was lowly enough, and in some sense miserable enough, and
yet their hearts clove to it with a great affection. They had been
so happy there, and in the summer, with its clambering vine and its
flowering beans, it was so pretty and bright in the midst of the
sun-lighted fields! Their life in it had been full of labor and
privation, and yet they had been so well content, so gay of heart,
running together to meet the old man's never-failing smile of welcome!

All night long the boy and the dog sat by the fireless hearth in the
darkness, drawn close together for warmth and sorrow. Their bodies were
insensible to the cold, but their hearts seemed frozen in them.

When the morning broke over the white, chill earth it was the morning
of Christmas Eve. With a shudder, Nello clasped close to him his only
friend, while his tears fell hot and fast on the dog's frank forehead.
"Let us go, Patrasche--dear, dear Patrasche," he murmured. "We will not
wait to be kicked out; let us go."

Patrasche had no will but his, and they went sadly, side by side, out
from the little place which was so dear to them both, and in which every
humble, homely thing was to them precious and beloved. Patrasche drooped
his head wearily as he passed by his own green cart; it was no longer
his,--it had to go with the rest to pay the rent,--and his brass harness
lay idle and glittering on the snow. The dog could have lain down beside
it and died for very heart-sickness as he went, but while the lad lived
and needed him Patrasche would not yield and give way.

They took the old accustomed road into Antwerp. The day had yet scarce
more than dawned; most of the shutters were still closed, but some of
the villagers were about. They took no notice while the dog and the boy
passed by them. At one door Nello paused and looked wistfully within;
his grandfather had done many a kindly turn in neighbour's service to
the people who dwelt there.

"Would you give Patrasche a crust?" he said, timidly. "He is old, and he
has had nothing since last forenoon."

The woman shut the door hastily, murmuring some vague saying about wheat
and rye being very dear that season. The boy and the dog went on again
wearily; they asked no more.

By slow and painful ways they reached Antwerp as the chimes tolled ten.

"If I had anything about me I could sell to get him bread!" thought
Nello; but he had nothing except the wisp of linen and serge that
covered him, and his pair of wooden shoes.

Patrasche understood, and nestled his nose into the lad's hand as though
to pray him not to be disquieted for any woe or want of his.

The winner of the drawing prize was to be proclaimed at noon, and to the
public building where he had left his treasure Nello made his way. On
the steps and in the entrance-hall there was a crowd of youths,--some of
his age, some older, all with parents or relatives or friends. His heart
was sick with fear as he went among them holding Patrasche close to him.
The great bells of the city clashed out the hour of noon with brazen
clamour. The doors of the inner hall were opened; the eager, panting
throng rushed in. It was known that the selected picture would be raised
above the rest upon a wooden dais.

A mist obscured Nello's sight, his head swam, his limbs almost failed
him. When his vision cleared he saw the drawing raised on high; it was
not his own! A slow, sonorous voice was proclaiming aloud that victory
had been adjudged to Stephen Kiesslinger, born in the burg of Antwerp,
son of a wharfinger in that town.

When Nello recovered his consciousness he was lying on the stones
without, and Patrasche was trying with every art he knew to call him
back to life. In the distance a throng of the youths of Antwerp were
shouting around their successful comrade, and escorting him with
acclamations to his home upon the quay.

The boy staggered to his feet and drew the dog into his embrace. "It is
all over, dear Patrasche," he murmured--"all over!"

He rallied himself as best he could, for he was weak from fasting, and
retraced his steps to the village. Patrasche paced by his side with his
head drooping and his old limbs feeble from hunger and sorrow.

The snow was falling fast; a keen hurricane blew from the north; it
was bitter as death on the plains. It took them long to traverse the
familiar path, and the bells were sounding four of the clock as they
approached the hamlet. Suddenly Patrasche paused, arrested by a scent in
the snow, scratched, whined, and drew out with his teeth a small case of
brown leather. He held it up to Nello in the darkness. Where they were
there stood a little Calvary, and a lamp burned dully under the cross;
the boy mechanically turned the case to the light; on it was the name of
Baas Cogez, and within it were notes for two thousand francs.

The sight roused the lad a little from his stupor. He thrust it in his
shirt, and stroked Patrasche and drew him onward. The dog looked up
wistfully in his face.

Nello made straight for the mill-house, and went to the house door and
struck on its panels. The miller's wife opened it weeping, with little
Alois clinging close to her skirts. "Is it thee, thou poor lad?" she
said kindly, through her tears. "Get thee gone ere the Baas see thee.
We are in sore trouble to-night. He is out seeking for a power of money
that he has let fall riding homeward, and in this snow he never will
find it; and God knows it will go nigh to ruin us. It is Heaven's own
judgment for the things we have done to thee."

Nello put the note-case in her hand and called Patrasche within the
house. "Patrasche found the money to-night," he said quickly. "Tell Baas
Cogez so; I think he will not deny the dog shelter and food in his old
age. Keep him from pursuing me, and I pray of you to be good to him."

Ere either woman or dog knew what he meant he had stooped and kissed
Patrasche, then closed the door hurriedly, and disappeared in the gloom
of the fast-falling night.

The woman and the child stood speechless with joy and fear; Patrasche
vainly spent the fury of his anguish against the iron-bound oak of the
barred house door. They did not dare unbar the door and let him forth;
they tried all they could to solace him. They brought him sweet cakes
and juicy meats; they tempted him with the best they had; they tried to
lure him to abide by the warmth of the hearth; but it was of no avail.
Patrasche refused to be comforted or to stir from the barred portal.

It was six o'clock when from an opposite entrance the miller at last
came, jaded and broken, into his wife's presence. "It is lost forever,"
he said, with an ashen cheek and a quiver in his stern voice. "We have
looked with lanterns everywhere; it is gone--the little maiden's portion
and all!"

His wife put the money into his hand, and told him how it had come to
her. The strong man sank trembling into a seat and covered his face,
ashamed and almost afraid. "I have been cruel to the lad," he muttered
at length; "I deserved not to have good at his hands."

Little Alois, taking courage, crept close to her father and nestled
against him her fair curly head. "Nello may come here again, father?"
she whispered. "He may come to-morrow as he used to do?"

The miller pressed her in his arms; his hard, sunburnt face was very
pale and his mouth trembled. "Surely, surely," he answered his child.
"He shall bide here on Christmas Day, and any other day he will. God
helping me, I will make amends to the boy--I will make amends."

Little Alois kissed him in gratitude and joy; then slid from his knees
and ran to where the dog kept watch by the door. "And to-night I may
feast Patrasche?" she cried in a child's thoughtless glee.

Her father bent his head gravely: "Ay, ay! let the dog have the best;"
for the stern old man was moved and shaken to his heart's depths.

It was Christmas eve, and the mill-house was filled with oak logs and
squares of turf, with cream and honey, with meat and bread, and the
rafters were hung with wreaths of evergreen, and the Calvary and the
cuckoo clock looked out from a mass of holly. There were little paper
lanterns, too, for Alois, and toys of various fashions and sweetmeats
in bright-pictured papers. There were light and warmth and abundance
everywhere, and the child would fain have made the dog a guest honoured
and feasted.

But Patrasche would neither lie in the warmth nor share in the cheer.
Famished he was and very cold, but without Nello he would partake
neither of comfort nor food. Against all temptation he was proof, and
close against the door he leaned always, watching only for a means of
escape.

"He wants the lad," said Baas Cogez. "Good dog! good dog! I will go over
to the lad the first thing at day-dawn." For no one but Patrasche knew
that Nello had left the hut, and no one but Patrasche divined that Nello
had gone to face starvation and misery alone.

The mill kitchen was very warm; great logs crackled and flamed on the
hearth; neighbours came in for a glass of wine and a slice of the fat
goose baking for supper. Alois, gleeful and sure of her playmate back
on the morrow, bounded and sang and tossed back her yellow hair. Baas
Cogez, in the fulness of his heart, smiled on her through moistened
eyes, and spoke of the way in which he would befriend her favourite
companion; the house-mother sat with calm, contented face at the
spinning-wheel; the cuckoo in the clock chirped mirthful hours. Amidst
it all Patrasche was bidden with a thousand words of welcome to tarry
there a cherished guest. But neither peace nor plenty could allure him
where Nello was not.

When the supper smoked on the board, and the voices were loudest
and gladdest, and the Christ-child brought choicest gifts to Alois,
Patrasche, watching always an occasion, glided out when the door was
unlatched by a careless new-comer, and, as swiftly as his weak and tired
limbs would bear him sped over the snow in the bitter, black night. He
had only one thought--to follow Nello. A human friend might have paused
for the pleasant meal, the cheery warmth, the cosey slumber; but that
was not the friendship of Patrasche. He remembered a bygone time, when
an old man and a little child had found him sick unto death in the
wayside ditch.

Snow had fallen freshly all the evening long; it was now nearly ten; the
trail of the boy's footsteps was almost obliterated. It took Patrasche
long to discover any scent. When at last he found it, it was lost again
quickly, and lost and recovered, and again lost and again recovered, a
hundred times or more.

The night was very wild. The lamps under the wayside crosses were blown
out; the roads were sheets of ice; the impenetrable darkness hid every
trace of habitations; there was no living thing abroad. All the cattle
were housed, and in all the huts and homesteads men and women rejoiced
and feasted. There was only Patrasche out in the cruel cold--old and
famished and full of pain, but with the strength and the patience of a
great love to sustain him in his search.

The trail of Nello's steps, faint and obscure as it was under the new
snow, went straightly along the accustomed tracks into Antwerp. It was
past midnight when Patrasche traced it over the boundaries of the town
and into the narrow, tortuous, gloomy streets. It was all quite dark in
the town, save where some light gleamed ruddily through the crevices
of house shutters, or some group went homeward with lanterns chanting
drinking-songs. The streets were all white with ice; the high walls and
roofs loomed black against them. There was scarce a sound save the riot
of the winds down the passages as they tossed the creaking signs and
shook the tall lamp-irons.

So many passers-by had trodden through and through the snow, so many
diverse paths had crossed and recrossed each other, that the dog had a
hard task to retain any hold on the track he followed. But he kept on
his way, though the cold pierced him to the bone, and the jagged ice cut
his feet, and the hunger in his body gnawed like a rat's teeth. He kept
on his way,--a poor gaunt, shivering thing,--and by long patience traced
the steps he loved into the very heart of the burg and up to the steps
of the great cathedral.

"He is gone to the things that he loved," thought Patrasche; he could
not understand, but he was full of sorrow and of pity for the art
passion that to him was so incomprehensible and yet so sacred.

The portals of the cathedral were unclosed after the midnight mass. Some
heedlessness in the custodians, too eager to go home and feast or sleep,
or too drowsy to know whether they turned the keys aright, had left one
of the doors unlocked. By that accident the footfalls Patrasche sought
had passed through into the building, leaving the white marks of snow
upon the dark stone floor. By that slender white thread, frozen as it
fell, he was guided through the intense silence, through the immensity
of the vaulted space--guided straight to the gates of the chancel,
and, stretched there upon the stones, he found Nello. He crept up,
and touched the face of the boy. "Didst thou dream that I should be
faithless and forsake thee? I--a dog?" said that mute caress.

The lad raised himself with a low cry and clasped him close. "Let us lie
down and die together," he murmured. "Men have no need of us, and we are
all alone."

In answer, Patrasche crept closer yet, and laid his head upon the young
boy's breast. The great tears stood in his brown, sad eyes; not for
himself--for himself he was happy.

They lay close together in the piercing cold. The blasts that blew over
the Flemish dikes from the northern seas were like waves of ice, which
froze every living thing they touched. The interior of the immense
vault of stone in which they were was even more bitterly chill than the
snow-covered plains without. Now and then a bat moved in the shadows;
now and then a gleam of light came on the ranks of carven figures. Under
the Rubens they lay together quite still, and soothed almost into a
dreaming slumber by the numbing narcotic of the cold. Together they
dreamed of the old glad days when they had chased each other through
the flowering grasses of the summer meadows, or sat hidden in the tall
bulrushes by the water's side, watching the boats go seaward in the sun.

Suddenly through the darkness a great white radiance streamed through
the vastness of the aisles; the moon, that was at her height, had broken
through the clouds; the snow had ceased to fall; the light reflected
from the snow without was clear as the light of dawn. It fell through
the arches full upon the two pictures above, from which the boy on his
entrance had flung back the veil: the "Elevation" and the "Descent of
the Cross" were for one instant visible.

Nello rose to his feet and stretched his arms to them; the tears of a
passionate ecstasy glistened on the paleness of his face. "I have seen
them at last!" he cried aloud. "O God, it is enough!"

His limbs failed under him, and he sank upon his knees, still gazing
upward at the majesty that he adored. For a few brief moments the light
illumined the divine visions that had been denied to him so long--light
clear and sweet and strong as though it streamed from the throne of
Heaven. Then suddenly it passed away; once more a great darkness covered
the face of Christ.

The arms of the boy drew close again the body of the dog. "We shall see
His face--_there_," he murmured; "and He will not part us, I think."

On the morrow, by the chancel of the cathedral, the people of Antwerp
found them both. They were both dead; the cold of the night had frozen
into stillness alike the young life and the old. When the Christmas
morning broke and the priests came to the temple, they saw them lying
thus on the stones together. Above, the veils were drawn back from the
great visions of Rubens, and the fresh rays of the sunrise touched the
thorn-crowned head of the Christ.

As the day grew on there came an old, hard-featured man who wept as
women weep. "I was cruel to the lad," he muttered; "and now I would have
made amends,--yea, to the half of my substance,--and he should have been
to me as a son."

There came also, as the day grew apace, a painter who had fame in the
world, and who was liberal of hand and of spirit. "I seek one who should
have had the prize yesterday had worth won," he said to the people--"a
boy of rare promise and genius. An old wood-cutter on a fallen tree at
eventide--that was all his theme; but there was greatness for the future
in it. I would fain find him, and take him with me and teach him art."

And a little child with curling fair hair, sobbing bitterly as she clung
to her father's arm, cried aloud, "Oh, Nello, come! We have all ready
for thee. The Christ-child's hands are full of gifts, and the old piper
will play for us; and the mother says thou shalt stay by the hearth and
burn nuts with us all the Noel week long--yes, even to the Feast of the
Kings! And Patrasche will be so happy! Oh, Nello, wake and come!"

But the young pale face, turned upward to the light of the great Rubens
with a smile upon its mouth, answered them all, "It is too late."

For the sweet, sonorous bells went ringing through the frost, and the
sunlight shone upon the plains of snow, and the populace trooped gay and
glad through the streets, but Nello and Patrasche no more asked charity
at their hands. All they needed now Antwerp gave unbidden.

Death had been more pitiful to them than longer life would have been. It
had taken the one in the loyalty of love, and the other in the innocence
of faith, from a world which for love has no recompense and for faith no
fulfilment.

All their lives they had been together, and in their deaths they were
not divided; for when they were found the arms of the boy were folded
too closely around the dog to be severed without violence, and the
people of their little village, contrite and ashamed, implored a special
grace for them, and, making them one grave, laid them to rest there side
by side--forever!




MARKHEIM, by Robert Louis Stevenson


"Yes," said the dealer, "our windfalls are of various kinds. Some
customers are ignorant, and then I touch a dividend on my superior
knowledge. Some are dishonest," and here he held up the candle, so
that the light fell strongly on his visitor, "and in that case," he
continued, "I profit by my virtue."

Markheim had but just entered from the daylight streets, and his eyes
had not yet grown familiar with the mingled shine and darkness in the
shop. At these pointed words, and before the near presence of the flame,
he blinked painfully and looked aside.

The dealer chuckled. "You come to me on Christmas Day," he resumed,
"when you know that I am alone in my house, put up my shutters, and make
a point of refusing business. Well, you will have to pay for that; you
will have to pay for my loss of time, when I should be balancing my
books; you will have to pay, besides, for a kind of manner that I remark
in you to-day very strongly. I am the essence of discretion, and ask no
awkward questions; but when a customer cannot look me in the eye, he has
to pay for it." The dealer once more chuckled; and then, changing to his
usual business voice, though still with a note of irony, "You can give,
as usual, a clear account of how you came into the possession of
the object?" he continued. "Still your uncle's cabinet? A remarkable
collector, sir!"

And the little pale, round-shouldered dealer stood almost on tip-toe,
looking over the top of his gold spectacles, and nodding his head with
every mark of disbelief. Markheim returned his gaze with one of infinite
pity, and a touch of horror.

"This time," said he, "you are in error. I have not come to sell, but to
buy. I have no curios to dispose of; my uncle's cabinet is bare to
the wainscot; even were it still intact, I have done well on the Stock
Exchange, and should more likely add to it than otherwise, and my errand
to-day is simplicity itself. I seek a Christmas present for a lady,"
he continued, waxing more fluent as he struck into the speech he had
prepared; "and certainly I owe you every excuse for thus disturbing you
upon so small a matter. But the thing was neglected yesterday; I must
produce my little compliment at dinner; and, as you very well know, a
rich marriage is not a thing to be neglected."

There followed a pause, during which the dealer seemed to weigh this
statement incredulously. The ticking of many clocks among the curious
lumber of the shop, and the faint rushing of the cabs in a near
thoroughfare, filled up the interval of silence.

"Well, sir," said the dealer, "be it so. You are an old customer after
all; and if, as you say, you have the chance of a good marriage, far be
it from me to be an obstacle. Here is a nice thing for a lady now," he
went on, "this hand-glass--fifteenth century, warranted; comes from a
good collection, too; but I reserve the name, in the interests of my
customer, who was just like yourself, my dear sir, the nephew and sole
heir of a remarkable collector."

The dealer, while he thus ran on in his dry and biting voice, had
stooped to take the object from its place; and, as he had done so, a
shock had passed through Markheim, a start both of hand and foot,
a sudden leap of many tumultuous passions to the face. It passed as
swiftly as it came, and left no trace beyond a certain trembling of the
hand that now received the glass.

"A glass," he said hoarsely, and then paused, and repeated it more
clearly. "A glass? For Christmas? Surely not?"

"And why not?" cried the dealer. "Why not a glass?"

Markheim was looking upon him with an indefinable expression. "You ask
me why not?" he said. "Why, look here--look in it--look at yourself! Do
you like to see it? No! nor I--nor any man."

The little man had jumped back when Markheim had so suddenly confronted
him with the mirror; but now, perceiving there was nothing worse
on hand, he chuckled. "Your future lady, sir, must be pretty hard
favoured," said he.

"I ask you," said Markheim, "for a Christmas present, and you give
me this--this damned reminder of years, and sins and follies--this
hand-conscience! Did you mean it? Had you a thought in your mind? Tell
me. It will be better for you if you do. Come, tell me about yourself. I
hazard a guess now, that you are in secret a very charitable man."

The dealer looked closely at his companion. It was very odd, Markheim
did not appear to be laughing; there was something in his face like an
eager sparkle of hope, but nothing of mirth.

"What are you driving at?" the dealer asked.

"Not charitable?" returned the other, gloomily. "Not charitable; not
pious; not scrupulous; unloving, unbeloved; a hand to get money, a safe
to keep it. Is that all? Dear God, man, is that all?"

"I will tell you what it is," began the dealer, with some sharpness, and
then broke off again into a chuckle. "But I see this is a love match of
yours, and you have been drinking the lady's health."

"Ah!" cried Markheim, with a strange curiosity. "Ah, have you been in
love? Tell me about that."

"I," cried the dealer. "I in love! I never had the time, nor have I the
time to-day for all this nonsense. Will you take the glass?"

"Where is the hurry?" returned Markheim. "It is very pleasant to stand
here talking; and life is so short and insecure that I would not hurry
away from any pleasure--no, not even from so mild a one as this. We
should rather cling, cling to what little we can get, like a man at a
cliff's edge. Every second is a cliff, if you think upon it--a cliff a
mile high--high enough, if we fall, to dash us out of every feature
of humanity. Hence it is best to talk pleasantly. Let us talk of each
other; why should we wear this mask? Let us be confidential. Who knows?
we might become friends."

"I have just one word to say to you," said the dealer. "Either make your
purchase, or walk out of my shop."

"True, true," said Markheim. "Enough fooling. To business. Show me
something else."

The dealer stooped once more, this time to replace the glass upon the
shelf, his thin blond hair falling over his eyes as he did so. Markheim
moved a little nearer, with one hand in the pocket of his greatcoat; he
drew himself up and filled his lungs; at the same time many different
emotions were depicted together on his face--terror, horror, and
resolve, fascination and a physical repulsion; and through a haggard
lift of his upper lip, his teeth looked out.

"This, perhaps, may suit," observed the dealer. And then, as he began
to rearise, Markheim bounded from behind upon his victim. The long,
skewer-like dagger flashed and fell. The dealer struggled like a hen,
striking his temple on the shelf, and then tumbled on the floor in a
heap.

Time had some score of small voices in that shop--some stately and slow
as was becoming to their great age; others garrulous and hurried. All
these told out the seconds in an intricate chorus of tickings. Then the
passage of a lad's feet, heavily running on the pavement, broke in upon
these smaller voices and startled Markheim into the consciousness of
his surroundings. He looked about him awfully. The candle stood on
the counter, its flame solemnly wagging in a draught; and by that
inconsiderable movement the whole room was filled with noiseless bustle
and kept heaving like a sea: the tall shadows nodding, the gross blots
of darkness swelling and dwindling as with respiration, the faces of the
portraits and the china gods changing and wavering like images in water.
The inner door stood ajar, and peered into that leaguer of shadows with
a long slit of daylight like a pointing finger.