It, too, had an eccentric clock, distinguished for a procession of figures of the saints, which jerked themselves into notice each hour above the dial; still it was not that which attracted the widow there.

The church was filled with large monumental figures with white, outstretching wings, that hovered out into prominence above the carvings of the old oak screens, black with age.

These figures appeared as if soaring up to the roof of the chancel; and Madame Dort had a fancy, morbid it might have been, that she could pray better there, surrounded as it were by guardian angels, whose protection she invoked on behalf of her boy lost at sea, and that other, yet alive, who was "in danger, necessity," and possibly "tribulation!" After she and Lorischen had returned home from the Marien Kirche, the day passed quietly and melancholy away; but the next morning broke more cheerfully.
It was the 30th of January, 1871.

Both the lone women at the little house in the Gulden Strasse remembered that fact well; for, on the morrow, the month from which they had expected such good tidings would be up, and if they heard nothing before its close they must needs despair.
Seeing that the morning broke bright and cheerily, with the sun shining down through the frost-laden air, making the snow on the roofs look crisper and causing the icicles from the eaves to glitter in its scintillating rays, Lorischen determined to go to market, especially as she had not been outside the doorway, except to go to church, since the previous week.
She had not much to buy, it is true; but then she might have a gossip with the neighbours and hear some news, perhaps--who knows?
Anything might have happened without the knowledge of herself or her mistress, as no one, not even Burgher Jans, had been to visit them for ever so long! Clad, therefore, in her thick cloak and warm boots, with her wide, red- knitted woollen shawl over her head and portly market-basket on arm, Lorischen sallied out like the dove from the ark, hoping perchance to bring back with her an olive branch of comfort; while the widow sat herself down by the stove in the parlour with her needle, stitching away at some new shirts she was engaged on to renew Fritz's wardrobe when he came back.

Seeing an opportunity for taking up a comfortable position, Mouser jumped up at once into her lap as soon as the old nurse had left the room, purring away with great complacency and watching in a lazy way the movements of her busy fingers, blinking sleepily the while at the glowing fire in front of him.
Lorischen had not been gone long when Madame Dort heard her bustling back up the staircase without.