fuel to feed the big stove they had always enough without cost,
for their mother's father was alive, and sold wood and fir cones
and coke, and never grudged them to his grandchildren, though he
grumbled at Strehla's improvidence and hapless, dreamy ways.

"Father says we are never to wait for him; we will have supper,
now you have come home, dear," said Dorothea, who, however she
might fret her soul in secret as she knitted their hose and mended
their shirts, never let her anxieties cast a gloom on the
children; only to August she did speak a little sometimes, because
he was so thoughtful and so tender of her always, and knew as well
as she did that there were troubles about money,--though these
troubles were vague to them both, and the debtors were patient and
kindly, being neighbors all in the old twisting streets between
the guardhouse and the river.

Supper was a huge bowl of soup, with big slices of brown bread
swimming in it and some onions bobbing up and down; the bowl was
soon emptied by ten wooden spoons, and then the three eldest boys
slipped off to bed, being tired with their rough bodily labor in
the snow all day, and Dorothea drew her spinning-wheel by the
stove and set it whirring, and the little ones got August down
upon the old worn wolfskin and clamored to him for a picture or a
story. For August was the artist of the family.

He had a piece of planed deal that his father had given him, and
some sticks of charcoal, and he would draw a hundred things he had
seen in the day, sweeping each out with his elbow when the
children had seen enough of it, and sketching another in its
stead,--faces and dogs' heads, and men in sledges, and old women