He thrust his hand through his gray and bushyhair, and inadvertently
kicked the cradle with his foot, so that it swayed to and fro violently.

"Why has this brat been born?" he murmured, gloomily. He knelt down near
the cradle and buried the tiny little fists in his big red hands, and
talked to his child: "If you had known, my boy, how bad and vile this world
is, how impudence triumphs, and honesty goes to ruin in it, you would
really have stayed where you were. What fate will yours be? Your father is
a sort of vagabond, a ruined man, who has to roam about the streets with
his wife and his three children till he has found a place where he can
completely ruin himself and his family."

"Max, do not speak thus; you break my heart!" called out Frau Elsbeth,
crying, and stretching out her hand to lay it round her husband's neck; but
her hand sank down without strength ere it had reached its destination.

He sprang up. "You are right; enough of these lamentations. Yes; if I were
alone now--a bachelor, as in former days--I should go to America, or the
Russian Steppes--there one can get rich; or I should speculate on the
Exchange--to-day up, to-morrow down. Oh, there one could earn money; but so
tied as one is!" He threw a lamentable glance at his wife and child; then
he pointed with his hand towards the yard, from whence resounded the
laughing voices of the two elder children.

"Yes; I know we must be a burden to you now," said the woman, meekly.

"Don't talk to me of burdens," he answered, gruffly; "what I said was not
meant angrily. I love you, and that's enough. Now the question only is,
Where to go? If at least this baby had not come, the chance of an uncertain