tapped softly at the lattice: there was a little light within. The child
opened it and looked out half frightened. Nello put the tambourine-player
into her hands. "Here is a doll I found in the snow, Alois. Take it," he
whispered--"take it, and God bless thee, dear!"

He slid down from the shed-roof before she had time to thank him, and ran
off through the darkness.

That night there was a fire at the mill. Outbuildings and much corn were
destroyed, although the mill itself and the dwelling-house were unharmed.
All the village was out in terror, and engines came tearing through the
snow from Antwerp. The miller was insured, and would lose nothing:
nevertheless, he was in furious wrath, and declared aloud that the fire
was due to no accident, but to some foul intent.

Nello, awakened from his sleep, ran to help with the rest: Baas Cogez
thrust him angrily aside. "Thou wert loitering here after dark," he said
roughly. "I believe, on my soul, that thou dost know more of the fire than
any one."

Nello heard him in silence, stupefied, not supposing that any one could
say such things except in jest, and not comprehending how any one could
pass a jest at such a time.

Nevertheless, the miller said the brutal thing openly to many of his
neighbors in the day that followed; and though no serious charge was ever
preferred against the lad, it got bruited about that Nello had been seen
in the mill-yard after dark on some unspoken errand, and that he bore Baas
Cogez a grudge for forbidding his intercourse with little Alois; and so
the hamlet, which followed the sayings of its richest landowner servilely,