"Hang himself?" stammered Lossing, "you don't mean ----"

"Yes, he was hang himself, but I cut him, no I broke him down,"
said Thekla, accurate in all the disorder of her spirits; and forthwith,
with many tremors, but clearly, she told the story of Kurt's despair.
She told, as Lieders never would have known how to tell,
even had his pride let him, all the man's devotion for the business,
all his personal attachment to the firm; she told of his gloom
after the elder Lossing died, "for he was think there was no
one in this town such good man and so smart like your fader,
Mr. Lossing, no, and he would set all the evening and try to draw
and make the lines all wrong, and, then, he would drow the papers
in the fire and go and walk outside and he say, 'I can't do nothing
righd no more now the old man's died; they don't have no use for me
at the shop, pretty quick!' and that make him feel awful bad!"
She told of his homesick wanderings about the shops by night;
"but he was better as a watchman, he wouldn't hurt it for the world!
He telled me how you was hide his dinner-pail onct for a joke,
and put in a piece of your pie, and how you climbed on the roof
with the hose when it was afire. And he telled me if he shall die I
shall tell you that he ain't got no hard feelings, but you didn't know
how that mantel had ought to be, so he done it righd the other way,
but he hadn't no righd to talk to you like he done, nohow, and you
was all righd to send him away, but you might a shaked hands,
and none of the boys never said nothing nor none of them never come
to see him, 'cept Carl Olsen, and that make him feel awful bad, too!
And when he feels so bad he don't no more want to live, so I make
him promise if I git him back he never try to kill himself again.
Oh, Mr. Lossing, please don't let my man die!"