Claude the Colporteur

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. CLAUDE RELATES HIS HISTORY. HANS drew the bow across the strings of his violin, so as to produce a dissonant sort of wail, and then set it aside. What an uproar you have made said he abruptly. Dear, dear, dear said Mother Agnes, more in sorrow than in anger, to think that you should make...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. CLAUDE RELATES HIS HISTORY. HANS drew the bow across the strings of his violin, so as to produce a dissonant sort of wail, and then set it aside. What an uproar you have made said he abruptly. Dear, dear, dear said Mother Agnes, more in sorrow than in anger, to think that you should make such a return as this, for my bringing you home and doing so much for you You have sent Lisa off to bed quite in a huff, poor dear I grieve, said Claude, that my conduct should appear to you so ungrateful, as I know it must do. I was hungry, added he, with feeling, and you gave me meat; I was thirsty, and you gave me drink; I was a stranger, and you tookme in; lame and in pain, and you ministered unto me. Don't name it, said Mother Agnes, busying herself in lighting a brazen lamp, which the waning daylight rendered necessary. Christians should help one another; and a Christian I take you to be, in spite of the hard things you have been saying. Even our blessed Lord did that sometimes, said Claude. His disciples objected it to him, ' This is a hard saying, who can receive it ?' And yet what he had been telling them about his flesh being meat indeed, the true bread from heaven, became easy enough to receive when he instituted the sacramental feast. Ah, we are all poor ignorant creatures, said Hans. There's many a nut I find too hard to crack, without counting those you have given me to-night. But let us see this book of yours, continued he, smiling and stretching out his hand. Perhaps it may have all the more savour for me for being prohibited; at any rate, I'm too old to be hurt by it. But I'm glad Lisa has gone off out of hearing, nevertheless; for though the shaping and hammering these wretched little images hasso...