long, weary conflict was not an armed and panoplied knight, but merely
a poor German woman, only God and the angels took much interest in it.
Still upon this evening she was almost vanquished. She seemed to have
but one vantage-point left on earth. For a wonder, her husband was
comparatively sober, and sat brooding with his head in his hands over
the stove where a fire was slowly dying out. The last coal they had
was fast turning to ashes. From a cradle came a low, wailing cry. It
was that of hunger. On an old chest in a dusky corner sat a boy about
thirteen. Though all else was in shadow, his large eyes shone with
unnatural brightness, and followed his mother's feeble efforts at the
washtub with that expression of premature sadness so pathetic in
childhood. Under a rickety deal table three other and smaller children
were devouring some crusts of bread in a ravenous way, like
half-famished young animals. In a few moments they came out and clamored
for more, addressing--not their father; no intuitive turning to him
for support--but the poor, over-tasked mother. The boy came out of his
corner and tried to draw them off and interest them in something else,
but they were like a pack of hungry little wolves. The boy's face was
almost as sharp and famine-pinched as his mother's, but he seemed to
have lost all thought of himself in his sorrowful regard for her. As
the younger children clamored and dragged upon her, the point of
endurance was passed, and the poor woman gave way. With a despairing
cry she sank upon a chair and covered her face with her apron.

"Oh, mine Gott, Oh, mine Gott," she cried, "I can do not von more
stroke if ve all die."

In a moment her son had his arms around her neck, and said: "Oh, moder,
don't cry, don't cry. Mr. Fleet said God would surely help us in time
of trouble if we would only ask Him."