Page:Famous stories from foreign countries.djvu/143

 can pay the pastor—and then there’ll be no danger of the execution,” he went on. He seemed to become more confidential. I was interested to know something more about the life of the old man, and observed indifferently:

“That mare of yours is pretty thin. How can you expect her to haul those two barrels of tar to the city?”

“Yes, true it is. The mare is lean. But how could the poor creature be fat, when fed upon swamp-grass and water?” confessed the old man.

“But the creature ought to be provided for first,” I suggested.

“So anyone would say, who observed from a distance and did not know. But when the cold has killed everything, you’d take what little you could get and put into the pot, to keep the family from starving. There’s very little difference between what we get to eat and the old mare. I guess you’d find the old mare fares just as well as we do,” the old man explained, looking up in surprise at my way of judging.

“At least you should have had these boots of yours mended. Your feet are wet.”

“Anyone would say so—who didn’t know. But if you had six hungry, naked children, and a wife, you wouldn’t have time to think about mending shoes. Besides, these shoes have been mended and mended—and now they can’t be mended any more. Of course I’d like to wear respectable clothes—but there’s no way,”—declared the old man with a peculiar intonation of melancholy.

“Where’s your home?”