Having concluded this quaint production, he put it where the children would find it the next morning, and proceeded to prepare his bundle. He never thought of entering a protest against the loss of his goods; like a child, he submitted, and wept. He had been there eleven years, and it was hard to go away. He spread open on the bed a blue handkerchief, and on it put one by one the things he thought most necessary and important—a little bag of curious seeds, which he meant to plant some day, an old German hymn-book, three misshapen stones that he greatly valued, a Bible, a shirt and two handkerchiefs; then there was room for nothing more. He tied up the bundle tightly and put it on a chair by his bedside.
“That is not much; they cannot say I take much,” he said, looking at it.
He put his knotted stick beside it, his blue tobacco bag and his short pipe, and then inspected his coats. He had two left—a moth-eaten overcoat and a black alpaca, out at the elbows. He decided for the overcoat; it was warm, certainly, but then he could carry it over his arm and only put it on when he met some one along the road. It was more respectable than the black alpaca.
He hung the greatcoat over the back of the chair, and stuffed a hard bit of roaster-cake under the knot of the bundle, and then his preparations were completed. The German stood contemplating them with much satisfaction. He had almost forgotten his sorrow at leaving in his pleasure at preparing. Suddenly he started; an expression of intense pain passed over his face. He drew back his left arm quickly, and then pressed his right hand upon his breast.
“Ah, the sudden pang again,” he said.
His face was white, but it quickly regained its colour. Then the old man busied himself in putting everything right.
“I will leave it neat. They shall not say I did not leave it neat,” he said. Even the little bags of seeds on the mantelpiece he put in rows and dusted. Then he undressed and got into bed. Under his pillow was a little storybook. He drew it forth. To the old German a story was no story. Its events were as real and as important to himself as the matters of his own life.
He could not go away without knowing whether that wicked earl relented and whether the baron married Emilina. So he adjusted his spectacles and began to read. Occasionally, as his feelings became too strongly moved, he ejaculated: “Ah, I thought so! That was a rogue! I saw it before! I knew it from the beginning!” More than half an hour had passed when he looked up to the silver watch at the top of his bed.
“The march is long tomorrow; this will not do,” he said, taking off his spectacles and putting them carefully into the book to mark the place. “This will be good reading as I walk along tomorrow,” he added, as he stuffed the book into the pocket of the greatcoat; “very good reading.” He nodded his head and lay down. He thought a little of his own troubles, a good deal of the two little girls he was leaving, of the earl, of Emilina, of the baron; but he was soon asleep—sleeping as peacefully as a little child, upon whose innocent soul sorrow and care cannot rest.
It was very quiet in the room. The coals in the fireplace threw a dull red light across the floor upon the red lions on the quilt. Eleven o’clock came, and the room was very still.