at home than a veteran soldier to shirk when the charge was sounding; and
every day he would rise and place himself in his shafts, and plod along
over the snow through the fields that his four round feet had left their
print upon so many, many years.

"One must never rest till one dies," thought Patrasche; and sometimes it
seemed to him that that time of rest for him was not very far off. His
sight was less clear than it had been, and it gave him pain to rise after
the night's sleep, though he would never lie a moment in his straw when
once the bell of the chapel tolling five let him know that the daybreak of
labor had begun.

"My poor Patrasche, we shall soon lie quiet together, you and I," said old
Jehan Daas, stretching out to stroke the head of Patrasche with the old
withered hand which had always shared with him its one poor crust of
bread; and the hearts of the old man and the old dog ached together with
one thought: When they were gone, who would care for their darling?

One afternoon, as they came back from Antwerp over the snow, which had
become hard and smooth as marble over all the Flemish plains, they found
dropped in the road a pretty little puppet, a tambourine--player, all
scarlet and gold, about six inches high, and, unlike greater personages
when Fortune lets them drop, quite unspoiled and unhurt by its fall. It
was a pretty toy. Nello tried to find its owner, and, failing, thought
that it was just the thing to please Alois.

It was quite night when he passed the mill-house: he knew the little
window of her room. It could be no harm, he thought, if he gave her his
little piece of treasure-trove, they had been playfellows so long. There
was a shed with a sloping roof beneath her casement: he climbed it and