“That is strong,” she said, when she had finished:  “I relish it.”  The other girl, who had lifted her head to listen to her sister, repeated, while she gazed at the fire, a line of what had been read.  At a later day, I knew the language and the book; therefore, I will here quote the line:  though, when I first heard it, it was only like a stroke on sounding brass to me —­ conveying no meaning:-

“‘Da trat hervor Einer, anzusehen wie die Sternen Nacht.’  Good! good!” she exclaimed, while her dark and deep eye sparkled.  “There you have a dim and mighty archangel fitly set before you!  The line is worth a hundred pages of fustian.  ’Ich wage die Gedanken in der Schale meines Zornes und die Werke mit dem Gewichte meines Grimms.’  I like it!”

Both were again silent.

“Is there ony country where they talk i’ that way?” asked the old woman, looking up from her knitting.

“Yes, Hannah —­ a far larger country than England, where they talk in no other way.”

“Well, for sure case, I knawn’t how they can understand t’ one t’other:  and if either o’ ye went there, ye could tell what they said, I guess?”

“We could probably tell something of what they said, but not all —­ for we are not as clever as you think us, Hannah.  We don’t speak German, and we cannot read it without a dictionary to help us.”

“And what good does it do you?”

“We mean to teach it some time —­ or at least the elements, as they say; and then we shall get more money than we do now.”

“Varry like:  but give ower studying; ye’ve done enough for to-night.”

“I think we have:  at least I’m tired.  Mary, are you?”

“Mortally:  after all, it’s tough work fagging away at a language with no master but a lexicon.”

“It is, especially such a language as this crabbed but glorious Deutsch.  I wonder when St. John will come home.”

“Surely he will not be long now:  it is just ten (looking at a little gold watch she drew from her girdle).  It rains fast, Hannah:  will you have the goodness to look at the fire in the parlour?”

The woman rose:  she opened a door, through which I dimly saw a passage:  soon I heard her stir a fire in an inner room; she presently came back.

“Ah, childer!” said she, “it fair troubles me to go into yond’ room now:  it looks so lonesome wi’ the chair empty and set back in a corner.”

She wiped her eyes with her apron:  the two girls, grave before, looked sad now.

“But he is in a better place,” continued Hannah:  “we shouldn’t wish him here again.  And then, nobody need to have a quieter death nor he had.”

“You say he never mentioned us?” inquired one of the ladies.