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 “My dear Lukas, of course I should like to do this for you, but times are hard. Nowadays a person needs every penny and it would take a good deal to help such poor beggars as you. Why don’t you ask some one else? Why have you picked me out?”

“Because my wife was godmother to your child.”

“Oh, that’s it, is it? What you did for me at that time was a loan, was it? And now you want me to give you back as much as you gave me, eh? I’ll do no such thing! If I were as generous as you used to be, I’d soon go the way you have gone. No! I shall not walk one step toward that christening!”

Without answering her, Lukas turned and went home in tears.

“You see, dear wife,” he said when he got there, “it turned out as I knew it would. But don’t be discouraged, for God never entirely forsakes any one. Give me the child and I myself will carry it to the christening and the first person I meet I shall take for godmother.”

Weeping all the while, the wife wrapped the baby in a piece of old skirt and placed it in her husband’s arms.

On the way to the chapel, Lukas came to a crossroads where he met an old woman.