"Is it not a good chair, young master?" she said, laying down her knitting for a moment, and putting her right hand on Oswald's knee. "The baroness gave it to me after the baron died. She could not bear to look at it, she said; for it reminded her always of the moment when they brought him in, after he had fallen with Wodan, and put him into that chair; and Harald came running in and cried, when he saw his father so pale and disfigured, and she, too, was running about in the room and wringing her hands, and I stood by the baron and wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. I had no time for crying then, but I knew I would have time enough afterwards."
"And how old was Baron Harald when his father died?" asked Oswald.
"Ten years," answered Mother Claus, "and it would have been better for him if he had died too--for him and many others."
The old woman had taken up her knitting again, which had been lying idle in her lap, and was knitting more busily than ever, as if she wanted to make up for lost time.
"Yes, yes," she said; "it would have been better. Then he was a beautiful, innocent boy, with rosy cheeks and violet eyes, and when he died----"
The old woman paused--the needles clinked and the rain beat against the panes.
"Well," said Oswald, "and when he died----"
"Then he was a bad man, and it was a bad death. I alone know it, for I alone was with the poor man when death seized him with the iron hand. Then they struggled with each other, strong Harald and strong Death, and it was a horrible sight, so horrible that all the others ran away; but I would not abandon him in his last hour, for he was, after all, Oscar's son, and I had borne him in my arms when he was an innocent babe, and rocked him on my knees. So I held on and prayed, while he swore and cursed God, till Death struck him on the heart, and he cried out aloud and fell back on his pillow. Then it was all over with him, and his poor soul was at rest."
"And had the baron no friend who might have stood by him in his last hour?"
"Friends enough, and men among them who were not afraid of a death-bed; but they were afraid of Harald; he would have strangled and torn to pieces any one who would have come to him at that hour. I only wish they had come, one after the other; there was not one among them but deserved to have his neck twisted."