where the family of the ruined squire had to live henceforth.

This was the place where little Paul grew up, and to which the love of his
childhood, the care of half his life was devoted.

He was in his early years a delicate, sickly creature, and many a night his
mother trembled lest the feeble light of his life should be extinguished
before dawn. At such times she would sit in the dark, low bedroom, leaning
her elbow on the edge of his little bed, gazing with feverish eyes at his
little thin body, which was painfully convulsed by spasms.

But he passed all the crises of his early childhood, and at five years old,
though pale and weak of limb and almost careworn in face--for he had
really retained the old look--he was a healthy boy, who gave promise of
long life.

At this time his first recollections begin. The earliest, which in
after-years he often recalled, was as follows:

The room is half dark. Icicles are clinging to the windows, and through
the curtains shines the red glow of the sunset. The elder brothers have
gone skating, but he is in his little bed--for he has to go to bed early--
and near him sits his mother, one hand encircling his neck, and the other
on the edge of the cradle, in which the two little sisters sleep, which
Master Stork brought a year ago, both on the same day.

"Mamma, tell me a fairy tale," he pleads.

And his mother told him one. What? He could only remember very faintly, but
there was something in it about a gray woman who had visited his mother