Page:Famous history of Valentine & Orson (1).pdf/21

 dipped a bit of the loaf in the milk, and patiently assisted his little famished ehargecharge [sic].

The ehildchild [sic] looked up in his faeeface [sic], and smiled: Walden, pleased and affeetedaffected [sic] at this intuitive mark of gratitude, kissed its little forehead.

“What is your occupation?” he asked the woman, who was eating with avidity: “you are I suppose, the mother of this little creature. Where do you live?”

“No, it is not my own,” replied she; “and I did not know his parents. I am the wife of a poor soldier, my worthy sir, and I have travelled from beyond Berlin a great way. My husband had been away from me three years, and I wanted to see him again—for I loved him dearly. My own two little children I left with their grandmother; and I sold every thing I did not absolutely want at home, that I might carry him a little trifle of money. AeeordinglyAccordingly [sic] I set out, and got to the end of my journey, just as my husband had marehedmarched [sic] with his corps, to drive a party of Austrians from some little village; so, when it was all over, and they had done what they had been ordered, I ran to thothe [sic] plaeeplace [sic] to meet him.”

Here the poor woman burst into tears. “And when I got there, he was dying of his wounds; yet he knew me, and stretched out his hand, saying, ‘Oh! Annette!—our children!’—These were his last words:—I thought I should have died too; but God willed for the sake of our little ones and this babe, that I should live. In the same house where my poor husband expired, was the wife of an Austrian soldier, who died two days afterwards, and left this babe, which nobody on earth seemed to care about. Almost all the village had been burned down, and all the inhabitants had run away; so that when