was a matter of no little importance. A nurse must be kept in good spirits; her frame of mind has such an immense influence on her health, and that again on the health of the child.

Mrs. Veyergang had all sorts of good things brought in from the pastry-cook's to enliven her; silk handkerchiefs and aprons abounded, and the servants at home received injunctions to inquire after Barbara's boy at the tinsmith's.

There was praise and nothing but praise to be given every time the Consul-General's Lars stopped there in driving past, and when Barbara only received a message of that kind, she could be happy and contented the whole month.

She was made much of, as she very soon felt. If she said or wanted anything, she was obeyed as if she were the mistress herself. And handsome clothes with constant change of fine underclothing, not to mention meat and drink—hardly anything of what she was accustomed to call work, her hands had already become quite soft and supple. And she felt that she was beginning to be attached to the two little ones whom she tended day and night.

One day, after the Consul's family had returned from the bathing-place, Barbara set out for the tinsmith's. It was late in the autumn. She could hardly ever remember the road out there so bad and muddy as it was now. Both her boots and the bottom of her dress would need cleaning and washing when she got back again.

The thought that she would soon see her boy put her in a cold perspiration; but of course things were best as they were, now that she could pay so well for him.

When she turned in by the wooden fence and saw the cottage with its familiar cracked windows in front of her, she slackened her pace a little. A feeling of apprehension suddenly came over her.

And then the neighbour's wife, whom she had so often helped, came out and began to talk and give her information, rattling on like a steam-engine. There had been war among the neighbours in the tinsmith's alley, and now that she saw Barbara herself, the truth should out, the real, actual truth.

The tinsmith's people need not imagine that other people hadn't got eyes in their head! Everything they possessed had gone to the pawnbroker's; there was barely enough of the tin-ware left to put in his cracked windows. And what they lived on, nobody round there could imagine, unless it was the payment they got for that poor little ill-used boy, that they gave lager-beer to, to keep him quiet. For no one would put up there now that the police had begun to keep an eye on the company, not even certain people who were not generally so particular about their quarters.

"But if you take my advice, Barbara, you'll take the boy to blockmaker Holman's down at the wharf. They are such nice, respectable people, and have pitied the boy so when I told them how they were treating him out here."

Blockmaker Holman, blockmaker Holman! The name rang in her ears as, heavy-hearted, she entered the tinsmith's.

There he lay among the ragged, dirty clothes, pale, thin and neglected, with frightened eyes. He began to cry when she took him up; he did not know her, and she scarcely knew him.

The disappointment—all that she felt—found vent in a rising torrent of angry words against the tinsmith and his wife.

But at the same time, while she was washing the boy, she felt how big, coarse and clumsy his face and body were, compared to the two delicate ones she was accustomed to. She saw now for the first time how impossible it would be to keep him herself.

But he should go to the blockmaker's, poor boy! Her name wasn't Barbara if she didn't get her mistress to see to that at once—as early as to-morrow.

She returned home with a face red and swollen with crying, and was inconsolable the whole evening until her mistress came down from the office with the promise that the matter should be arranged.

And thus it was that Nikolai came to blockmaker Holman's.

CHAPTER II

A STRICT DISCIPLINARIAN

It is in some ways a blessing that those who have suffered hardship and been neglected in their babyhood, do not remember anything about it—and yet perhaps something clings to them.

So, at any rate, Mrs. Holman declared. From the very first day the boy came into the house, she could see he had been brought up in a thieves' nest. His eyes were so wise and watchful, and he could be so craftily cunning and refractory, long before he could speak. She declared that he was positively malicious, so drowsy and quiet as he would be until she had just fallen asleep, when he would begin to shout as loud as a watchman.

But every one who knew anything about the Holmans, said that if they had not been fortunate in getting the boy, he had at any rate been fortunate in having found his way to them. There were not two opinions as to what an orderly woman Mrs. Holman was, and how strict in the fulfilment of her duty. Tall, thin and neat in her person, even her small, liver-coloured face, with the pale blue expressionless eyes, told you at once that she was not the woman to allow herself to be carried away by rash impetuosity.

And on the few occasions in the year that Barbara visited the boy—it was not so easy for her to come now that the Veyergangs lived in their country house all the year round—she could see for herself how well-cared-for and clean he was, and how strictly he was kept. From the time she got there to the time she left, she heard nothing except how difficult it was to straighten out all the tinsmith's dents, all that had been wrongly and improperly dealt with from the very first, especially his obstinate temper! Now he really could walk quite a good way, but he would do nothing but crawl, and so quickly, that no sooner had she, Mrs. Holman, taken her eyes off him than he might be anywhere, either at the saucepans and pots, or in the water-bucket, or else at the plummets on the bell. And he upset things, and got himself in a mess, wherever he went; yesterday the cat's food lay all over the floor! So now she had hung the birch-rod low down on the wall, so that it might be before his eyes; for it was necessary to frighten him, and vigilance and punishment must positively be used. And Barbara must know herself, that it wasn't so easy to manage other people's children, and especially such a stray creature, come into the world in such a manner!

It was all just, as Barbara was obliged to acknowledge to herself, from beginning to end, however much it might sting her, and therefore she was always in a hurry to get away again.

It cannot be denied that she learnt something from it too, namely, what she, on her side, might have reason and right to say to Mrs. Veyergang about all the toil she had had with her two, if they ever had a difference.

But the same spirit of disobedience remained in the boy as he grew older. It was impossible to cure him of it, for all that Mrs. Holman could do, and Holman had to help too sometimes. This did not happen, however, until his wife had duly impressed on him the moral necessity of taking upon himself his share of the duties of the house.

Holman was a silent man with a pair of quiet, shining eyes. He went and came, morning and evening, rubbed and dried his shoes, and stood hesitating at the door with some tool or other, or the tail of a block in his hand, before he went in. What he might think of his married life there was little opportunity of seeing in his face. One thing was certain—a wife like Mrs. Holman was a treasure, which could not be sufficiently prized; and if there was not quite so much left of Holman, if, in fact, he had become—with all reverence be it said—something of a fool, yet every one was sensible that in that union it must be so, if the balance was to be kept. Any one who had only seen or spoken to Mrs. Holman once, understood it immediately, but what was not so easy to understand was that, after all, it was Holman who made the blocks down in the