vicious husband. So the sick cripple might only too easily find herself
left on the highway.

Still, she had given Cyriax cause for the threat. All day and during
the night she had been busy with the unfortunate mother and her twins,
and therefore had frequently neglected to fill his brandy bottle. But
this could not be helped, and she was not accustomed to think of the
future. Whatever her heart urged she did, no matter what might happen.
If Cyriax left her in the lurch, she must beg or starve unless chance,
which so often mingled in her existence, willed otherwise.

With the child's life the modest happiness which Kuni had enjoyed during
the last few months had vanished, not only because the tongueless
blasphemer had become a different person, and she sorely missed the
delicate little creature who had filled and cheered her heart, but she
had also lost the peace of mind which she enjoyed during the existence
of her charge.

The young Augsburg maiden, whom she thought she had bought out of the
flames of purgatory, did not appear to her again, but the vagrant's child
came all the more frequently, and whenever she showed herself she wailed
and wept bitterly. Sweet little Juli's soul must now--whether it had
been Juliane's or not--endure the tortures of purgatory, and this pierced
Kuni's heart the more deeply the more affectionately she remembered the
sickly-child.

Ever since she had used a black plaster, given to her at Singen by a
quack, the stump of her foot had become sore again, and sharp pain
tortured her so cruelly that, especially when the cough racked her
emaciated body and she was jolted to and fro in the springless cart over