We boys wanted to go and see Marget and show friendliness for her, but our parents were afraid of offending the community and wouldn’t let us.  The astrologer was going around inflaming everybody against Father Peter, and saying he was an abandoned thief and had stolen eleven hundred and seven gold ducats from him.  He said he knew he was a thief from that fact, for it was exactly the sum he had lost and which Father Peter pretended he had “found.”

In the afternoon of the fourth day after the catastrophe old Ursula appeared at our house and asked for some washing to do, and begged my mother to keep this secret, to save Marget’s pride, who would stop this project if she found it out, yet Marget had not enough to eat and was growing weak.  Ursula was growing weak herself, and showed it; and she ate of the food that was offered her like a starving person, but could not be persuaded to carry any home, for Marget would not eat charity food.  She took some clothes down to the stream to wash them, but we saw from the window that handling the bat was too much for her strength; so she was called back and a trifle of money offered her, which she was afraid to take lest Marget should suspect; then she took it, saying she would explain that she found it in the road.  To keep it from being a lie and damning her soul, she got me to drop it while she watched; then she went along by there and found it, and exclaimed with surprise and joy, and picked it up and went her way.  Like the rest of the village, she could tell every-day lies fast enough and without taking any precautions against fire and brimstone on their account; but this was a new kind of lie, and it had a dangerous look because she hadn’t had any practice in it.  After a week’s practice it wouldn’t have given her any trouble.  It is the way we are made.

I was in trouble, for how would Marget live?  Ursula could not find a coin in the road every day—­perhaps not even a second one.  And I was ashamed, too, for not having been near Marget, and she so in need of friends; but that was my parents’ fault, not mine, and I couldn’t help it.

I was walking along the path, feeling very down-hearted, when a most cheery and tingling freshening-up sensation went rippling through me, and I was too glad for any words, for I knew by that sign that Satan was by.  I had noticed it before.  Next moment he was alongside of me and I was telling him all my trouble and what had been happening to Marget and her uncle.  While we were talking we turned a curve and saw old Ursula resting in the shade of a tree, and she had a lean stray kitten in her lap and was petting it.  I asked her where she got it, and she said it came out of the woods and followed her; and she said it probably hadn’t any mother or any friends and she was going to take it home and take care of it.  Satan said: 

“I understand you are very poor.  Why do you want to add another mouth to feed?  Why don’t you give it to some rich person?”