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154 "Yanechek is not here; but here is a place prepared for you!"

Then the great hall itself began to turn round and round about Dorothy, and she felt as if she should faint away. In the midst of her distress and sense of sickness she fancied she could hear sighs of pain from the last little jar. They seemed like the cries of her lost Yanechek when at home feigning illness. "Oh, help, mother, help!" These words came indeed from the last little jar, and the sound of them revived the poor mother again. She recognised her son with her soul; she quickly lifted up the jar, and Yanechek sprang out of his narrow prison.

"May you stick fast in a swamp, you slow mother!" cried the liberated son.

But the mother, doting on her wicked boy, did not hear the cruel words. She looked with intense commiseration on his thin face, his sunken eyes, his pale lips and bony hands, and covered his emaciated body with kisses.

"What did you eat here, my poor boy?"

"Despair was my food."

"What did you drink here, my poor boy?"

"Despair was my drink."

To every question Dorothy put to him, his answer was "Despair." And the mother's heart was again troubled,