child--a mere baby, and so pretty! She has opened her eyes and spoken."

"Give her some soup and wine--hot," said the professor, without
stirring.

"But won't you come?" she asked.

The professor hesitated; he hated attending in cases of illness, though
he was a properly qualified doctor and in an emergency would lay his
prejudice aside.

"Or shall I run across for the good Dr. Smit?" Koosje asked. "He would
come in a minute, only it is _such_ a night!"

At that moment a fiercer gust than before rattled at the casements, and
the professor laid aside his scruples.

He followed his housekeeper down the chilly, marble-flagged passage into
the kitchen, where he never went for months together--a cosey enough,
pleasant place, with a deep valance hanging from the mantel-shelf, with
many great copper pans, bright and shining as new gold, and furniture
all scrubbed to the whiteness of snow.

In an arm-chair before the opened stove sat the rescued girl--a slight,
golden-haired thing, with wistful blue eyes and a frightened air. Every
moment she caught her breath in a half-hysterical sob, while violent
shivers shook her from head to foot.

The professor went and looked at her over his spectacles, as if she had
been some curious specimen of his favourite study; but at the same time