Could the lady give her something to eat? she asked; they had had nothing during the day, and the little ones were almost famished.

Koosje, who was very charitable, lifted a tray of large, plain buns, and was about to give her some, when her eyes fell upon the poor beggar’s faded face, and she exclaimed: 

“Truide!”

Truide, for it was she, looked up in startled surprise.

“I did not know, or I would not have come in, Koosje,” she said, humbly; “for I treated you very badly.”

“Ve-ry bad-ly,” returned Koosje, emphatically.  “Then where is Jan?”

“Dead!” murmured Truide, sadly.

“Dead! so—­ah, well!  I suppose I must do something for you.  Here Yanke!” opening the door and calling, “Yanke!”

“Je, jevrouw,” a voice cried, in reply.

The next moment a maid came running into the shop.

“Take these people into the kitchen and give them something to eat.  Put them by the stove while you prepare it.  There is some soup and that smoked ham we had for koffy.  Then come here and take my place for a while.”

“Je, jevrouw,” said Yanke, disappearing again, followed by Truide and her children.

Then Koosje sat down again, and began to think.

“I said,” she mused, presently, “that night that the next time I fell over a bundle I’d leave it where I found it.  Ah, well!  I’m not a barbarian; I couldn’t do that.  I never thought, though, it would be Truide.”

“Hi, jevrouw,” was called from the inner room.

“Je, mynheer,” jumping up and going to her customers.

She attended to their wants, and presently bowed them out.

“I never thought it would be Truide,” she repeated to herself, as she closed the door behind the last of the gay uniforms and jingling scabbards.  “And Jan is dead—­ah, well!”

Then she went into the kitchen, where the miserable children—­girls both of them, and pretty had they been clean and less forlornly clad—­were playing about the stove.

“So Jan is dead,” began Koosje, seating herself.

“Yes, Jan is dead,” Truide answered.

“And he left you nothing?” Koosje asked.

“We had had nothing for a long time,” Truide replied, in her sad, crushed voice.  “We didn’t get on very well; he soon got tired of me.”

“That was a weakness of his,” remarked Koosje, drily.

“We lost five little ones, one after another,” Truide continued.  “And Jan was fond of them, and somehow it seemed to sour him.  As for me, I was sorry enough at the time, Heaven knows, but it was as well.  But Jan said it seemed as if a curse had fallen upon us; he began to wish you back again, and to blame me for having come between you.  And then he took to genever, and then to wish for something stronger; so at last every stiver went for absinthe, and once or twice he beat me, and then he died.”