watch we have been guarding since that day. But, no--I'll never
believe it."

"The watch was not worth a quarter of the money, Mother."

"No, indeed, and your father was a shrewd man up to the last
moment. He was too steady and thrifty for silly doings."

"Where did the watch come from, I wonder," muttered Hans, half to
himself.

Dame Brinker shook her head and looked sadly toward her husband,
who sat staring blankly at the floor. Gretel stood near him,
knitting.

"That we shall never know, Hans. I have shown it to the father
many a time, but he does not know it from a potato. When he came
in that dreadful night to supper, he handed the watch to me and
told me to take good care of it until he asked for it again.
Just as he opened his lips to say more, Broom Klatterboost came
flying in with word that the dike was in danger. Ah! The waters
were terrible that Pinxter-week! My man, alack, caught up his
tools and ran out. That was the last I ever saw of him in his
right mind. He was brought in again by midnight, nearly dead,
with his poor head all bruised and cut. The fever passed off in
time, but never the dullness--THAT grew worse every day. We
shall never know."

Hans had heard all this before. More than once he had seen his
mother, in hours of sore need, take the watch from its hiding