“He believed what I have taught you.”
“Then were they wicked, and not he?”
“Judge for thyself. There were about thirty of thy father’s countrymen, who came over to this country to preach the pure Word of God: and those who called them heretics took them, and branded them, and turned them out into the snow to die. Would our Lord have done that?”
“Never! Did they die?”
“Every one, except the child I saved.”
“And that was I, Mother?”
“That was thou.”
“So I am not an Englishman!” said Rudolph, almost regretfully.
“No. Thou seest now why I taught thee German. It is thine own tongue.”
“Mother, this story is terrible. I shall feel the world a worse place to my life’s end, after hearing it. But suffer me to ask—who are you? We are so unlike, that sometimes I have fancied we might not be related at all.”