murmur, "Nay, have courage! It was not by a weak heart and by faint fears
that I wrote my name for all time upon Antwerp."

Nello ran home through the cold night, comforted. He had done his best:
the rest must be as God willed, he thought, in that innocent,
unquestioning faith which had been taught him in the little gray chapel
among the willows and the poplar-trees.

[Illustration: ]

The winter was very sharp already. That night, after they reached the hut,
snow fell; and fell for very many days after that, so that the paths and
the divisions in the fields were all obliterated, and all the smaller
streams were frozen over, and the cold was intense upon the plains. Then,
indeed, it became hard work to go round for the milk while the world was
all dark, and carry it through the darkness to the silent town. Hard work,
especially for Patrasche, for the passage of the years, that were only
bringing Nello a stronger youth, were bringing him old age, and his joints
were stiff and his bones ached often. But he would never give up his share
of the labor. Nello would fain have spared him and drawn the cart himself,
but Patrasche would not allow it. All he would ever permit or accept was
the help of a thrust from behind to the truck as it lumbered along through
the ice-ruts. Patrasche had lived in harness, and he was proud of it. He
suffered a great deal sometimes from frost, and the terrible roads, and
the rheumatic pains of his limbs, but he only drew his breath hard and
bent his stout neck, and trod onward with steady patience.

"Rest thee at home, Patrasche--it is time thou didst rest--and I can quite
well push in the cart by myself," urged Nello many a morning; but
Patrasche, who understood him aright, would no more have consented to stay