“Two minutes to ten.  Seven minutes more and he will pass the death-point.  Theodor, he is going to be saved!  He’s going to—­”

“Hush!  I’m on needles.  Watch the clock and keep still.”

Five minutes more.  We were panting with the strain and the excitement.  Another three minutes, and there was a footstep on the stair.

“Saved!” And we jumped up and faced the door.

The old mother entered, bringing the kite.  “Isn’t it a beauty?” she said.  “And, dear me, how he has slaved over it—­ever since daylight, I think, and only finished it awhile before you came.”  She stood it against the wall, and stepped back to take a view of it.  “He drew the pictures his own self, and I think they are very good.  The church isn’t so very good, I’ll have to admit, but look at the bridge—­any one can recognize the bridge in a minute.  He asked me to bring it up....  Dear me! it’s seven minutes past ten, and I—­”

“But where is he?”

“He?  Oh, he’ll be here soon; he’s gone out a minute.”

“Gone out?”

“Yes.  Just as he came down-stairs little Lisa’s mother came in and said the child had wandered off somewhere, and as she was a little uneasy I told Nikolaus to never mind about his father’s orders—­go and look her up....  Why, how white you two do look!  I do believe you are sick.  Sit down; I’ll fetch something.  That cake has disagreed with you.  It is a little heavy, but I thought—­”

She disappeared without finishing her sentence, and we hurried at once to the back window and looked toward the river.  There was a great crowd at the other end of the bridge, and people were flying toward that point from every direction.

“Oh, it is all over—­poor Nikolaus!  Why, oh, why did she let him get out of the house!”

“Come away,” said Seppi, half sobbing, “come quick—­we can’t bear to meet her; in five minutes she will know.”

But we were not to escape.  She came upon us at the foot of the stairs, with her cordials in her hands, and made us come in and sit down and take the medicine.  Then she watched the effect, and it did not satisfy her; so she made us wait longer, and kept upbraiding herself for giving us the unwholesome cake.

Presently the thing happened which we were dreading.  There was a sound of tramping and scraping outside, and a crowd came solemnly in, with heads uncovered, and laid the two drowned bodies on the bed.

“Oh, my God!” that poor mother cried out, and fell on her knees, and put her arms about her dead boy and began to cover the wet face with kisses.  “Oh, it was I that sent him, and I have been his death.  If I had obeyed, and kept him in the house, this would not have happened.  And I am rightly punished; I was cruel to him last night, and him begging me, his own mother, to be his friend.”

And so she went on and on, and all the women cried, and pitied her, and tried to comfort her, but she could not forgive herself and could not be comforted, and kept on saying if she had not sent him out he would be alive and well now, and she was the cause of his death.