was sunken, and white as death, and there were blue rings around his sunken eyes.

He opened his eyes slowly and looked up without any intelligence in his face. Then he recognized his son, and tried to force himself out of his stupor. «Are you there, my boy,» he said in a low voice. «I borrowed ninety marks from Timmermann on the quiet, a little at a time when we hadn't anything in the house- you must pay him back, when you get to earning something yourself. Mother mustn't know anything about it—she'd be ashamed and work herself to death, if she knew. Then there's sixty-seven marks more, that your mother had to borrow from the storekeeper. As soon as I'm tended to, you go back home right away, and you see to getting that sixty-seven marks somewhere. Mother's so straight and honest that she can't stand owing anyone anything. But you mustn't tell her you're going, or she wouldn't let you go. Then come right back and keep a good watch on her, and keep her from hurting herself— you know what she's like. You must pet the little ones now and then, Klaus; only don't you let her see you.»>

Klaus kept nodding, with the tears running down his cheeks. He waited for his father to say something more, but he lay there, dead white, his whole forehead covered with drops of sweat, breathing irregularly. Klaus was too shy to think of saying to the doctor, «Let me stay here! Don't send me away from my father's deathbed to carry a message!» He turned away and hurried home.

He didn't find his mother in the flat; she had started to the hospital already. He cheered up the children, put them to bed, and talked to little Hanna, who was crying, asking where her father was, and listening on the stairs for her mother to come back. At dusk their mother did come. «Father is dead,» she said to Klaus, in a low cold tone. «Go to bed; I'm going to work.>>

He went out, crying gently, and stood in the hall. He gulped down his sobs so as not to wake Hanna, who had just gone to sleep.

Suddenly he heard his mother cry out - madly, like a wild beast. He stood there listening in terrible anxiety, hearing her strike her head and her elbows against the table, uttering wild, grief-stricken cries. He fastened the hall door softly, so that she could not get out. Then looking through the keyhole into the kitchen he saw her lying among the dirty dishes on the hearth, in front of the wooden chair that Jan Baas used to sit in, groaning in a tortured, choking voice: «God, you're crazy-God, you're a Don't you want anything more? If you would only come and take me! My dear husband!

My handsome, dear, cheerful, good husband! So dear-so handsome so good! What do you want, God? Do you want me to pray to you to help me take care of the children? Ha, ha! That makes me laugh at you! I can take care of the children myself! And if I couldn't, I wouldn't pray to you or anybody else about it! I'd take them and jump into the Elbe with them. Pray to you? to you? Ha, ha!»

Her son knelt outside the door, in deadly anxiety, his hair standing on end. He wondered what he ought to do; if she should rush out suddenly, he would hang onto her clothes and not let her go!

And so he spent the hours of that night, until finally only a dull groaning came from the kitchen. Then, overcome, he fell asleep, curled up like a dog against the door.

Toward morning he woke up freezing. He put on his good suit, and wrote on a scrap of paper:

«Father was talking to me. I have to go back home. I have my good suit on and I have some clean handkerchiefs and three marks. You must keep up. I'll stand by you like a hero.

From your loyal son, «KLAUS HINRICH BAAS.>>

She was sitting on

He peeped through the keyhole once more. the hearth, with her elbows up, holding one hand over her mouth, as if to keep it still, and staring straight at the wall. Then he left the flat, and went down the dark stairs. It was still dark outside. He went along the Langereihe toward Altona.

Gradually the sky grew lighter, and the streets gray. Part of the time Klaus's soul was with his father, who was being carried home now by strangers' hands; part of the time it was in the kitchen, where his mother was sitting on the cold hearth in the gray dawn. Part of the time he was thinking of their old home. Where would he ever get the money! Sixty-seven marks! Sixty-seven!

One day, ten years later, when he was sitting in his office on the shore of the Indian Ocean, thousands of miles away from home, he happened to hear that number again; and this sad morning and his bitter need rose up before him again, so deeply had that number stamped itself upon his soul.

GUSTAV FREYTAG

(1816-1895)

USTAV FREYTAG, one of the foremost of German novelists, was born July 13th, 1816, in Kreuzburg, Silesia, where his father was a physician. He studied alternately at Breslau and Berlin, at which latter university he was given the degree of a doctor of philosophy in 1838. In 1839 he settled as a privatdocent at the University of Breslau, where he lectured on the German language and literature until 1844, when he resigned his position to devote himself to literature. He removed to Leipzig in 1846, and the following year to Dresden, where he married. In 1848 he returned to Leipzig to edit with Julian Schmidt the weekly journal Die Grenzboten, which he conducted until 1861, and again from 1869 to 1870. In 1867 he became Liberal member for Erfurt in the North German Reichstag. In 1870, on the breaking out of the Franco-Prussian war, he was attached to the staff of the Crown Prince, later the German Emperor Frederick III., and remained in service until after the battle of Sedan. Subsequently to 1870 his journalistic work was chiefly for the newly established weekly periodical Im Neuen Reich. In 1879 he retired from public life and afterward lived in Wiesbaden, except for the summer months, which he spent on his estate Siebleben near Gotha. He died at Wiesbaden, April 30th, 1895.

All of Freytag's earliest work, with the single exception of a volume of poems published in 1845 under the title 'In Breslau,' is dramatic. His first production was a comedy, 'Die Brautfahrt' (The Wedding Journey), published in 1844, which although it was awarded a prize offered by the Royal Theatre in Berlin, found but indifferent popular favor, as did its successor, the one-act tragedy Die Gelehrte' (The Scholar). With his next play, 'Die Valentine' (1846), Freytag however was signally successful. This was followed the year after by 'Graf Waldemar.› He attained his highest dramatic success with the comedy 'Die Journalisten' (The Journalists), which appeared in 1853, and since its first production in 1854 has maintained its place as one of the most popular plays on the German stage. But one other play followed, the tragedy 'Die Fabier' (The Fabii), which appeared in 1859.

He had begun in the mean time his career as a novelist with his most famous novel, 'Soll und Haben' (Debit and Credit), which was