Nello and Patrasche went home with broken hearts. But even of that poor,
melancholy, cheerless home they were denied the consolation. There was a
month's rent over-due for their little home, and when Nello had paid the
last sad service to the dead he had not a coin left. He went and begged
grace of the owner of the hut, a cobbler who went every Sunday night to
drink his pint of wine and smoke with Baas Cogez. The cobbler would grant
no mercy. He was a harsh, miserly man, and loved money. He claimed in
default of his rent every stick and stone, every pot and pan, in the hut,
and bade Nello and Patrasche be out of it on the morrow.

Now, the cabin was lowly enough, and in some sense miserable enough, and
yet their hearts clove to it with a great affection. They had been so
happy there, and in the summer, with its clambering vine and its flowering
beans, it was so pretty and bright in the midst of the sunlighted fields!
There life in it had been full of labor and privation, and yet they had
been so well content, so gay of heart, running together to meet the old
man's never-failing smile of welcome!

All night long the boy and the dog sat by the fireless hearth in the
darkness, drawn close together for warmth and sorrow. Their bodies were
insensible to the cold, but their hearts seemed frozen in them.

When the morning broke over the white, chill earth it was the morning of
Christmas Eve. With a shudder, Nello clasped close to him his only friend,
while his tears fell hot and fast on the dog's frank forehead. "Let us go,
Patrasche--dear, dear Patrasche," he murmured. "We will not wait to be
kicked out: let us go."

Patrasche had no will but his, and they went sadly, side by side, out from
the little place which was so dear to them both, and in which every