flitted over the girl's face as she motioned to the sleeper whose slumber
she was watching.

The young mother's pretty face still glowed with the flush of fever. One
arm clasped the baby, which lay amidst the white linen Katterle had just
brought. He was a pretty child, who showed no traces of the poverty in
which he had been reared. Beside the widow were two little girls about
six years old. The one at the left was sound asleep, with her head
resting on her little fat arm. The other, at the sick woman's right,
pressed her fair head upon her breast. Her slumber was very light, and
she often opened her large, blue eyes and gazed with touching anxiety at
the sick woman. This was the adopted child, Walpurga, and never had the
matron beheld amongst the poor and suffering so lovely a human flower as
this little six-year-old child, struggling with sleep in her affectionate
desire to render aid. The other little girl's free hand also touched her
mother, and thus these four, united in poverty and sorrow, but also in
love, seemed to form a single whole. What a peaceful, charming picture!

Frau Christine gazed with earnest sympathy at each member of this group.
How well-formed was every one! how pure and innocent the features of the
children looked! how kind and loving those of the suffering mother, who
was a thief, and whose tender back had felt the scourge of the
executioner!

The thought made her shudder. But when little Walpurga, half asleep,
raised her tiny hand and lovingly stroked the wounded shoulder of her
adopted mother, the matron, as usual when anything pleasant moved her
heart, longed to have her husband at her side. How easily, since he was
so near, she could afford him a sight of this touching picture! It
should prove that she had been right to let Eva remain here.