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An hour later the two friends, having enjoyed a bountiful supper, seated themselves in comfortable chairs, and between the whiffs of their meerschaums laughed at the storm which was still raging furiously outside.

"This is what I call real enjoyment," remarked Cornelius. "A good bottle of white curacoa, a good fire, good tobacco, and a congenial friend to talk to; am I not right, Christina?"

Christina came and went; she was here, there, and everywhere at the same time, removing plates and placing fresh glasses and a huge earthen jug on the table. At the mention of her name by Cornelius she blushed a fiery red, but said nothing in reply.

Christina (it is high time that we tell you) was a young girl who had been raised out of charity, in the house of our friend Balthazar.

Shortly after the death of her husband, Madame Van der Lys, Balthazar's mother, felt some one tugging at her dress as she was kneeling at her devotions one Sunday morning; fearing that some one was trying to pick her pocket she grasped the hand of the supposed offender. The hand belonged to a little girl, and was as cute and small as it is possible for a hand to be. The good woman