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Walden ceased to play, and looking over the hedge, he surveyed the child with compassion, as the woman lay on the grass to rest herself. He asked her in a soft voice, why the poor infant cried.
"He is hungry," replied the woman, weeping bitterly, "we have not had any thing to cat since yesterday morning."
"Gracious God! since yesterday morning! wait here a few minutes, and I will return."
He flew away with incredible swiftness, and re-appeared in a short time, with a bowl of milk and a small loaf, towards which the child stretched out his little arms, and the woman to whom he delivered them began to feed it.
"Sit down my good woman, and eat of it yourself," said Walden, "I will take care of your infant." Placing himself on the grass beside it, he dipped a bit of the loaf in the milk, and patiently assisted his little famished charge.
The child looked up in his face and smiled. Walden, pleased and affected at this intuitive mark of gratitude, kissed its little forehead.
"What is your occupation?" he asked the woman, who was eating with avidity; "you are, I suppose, the mother of this little creature: where do you live?"
"No, it is not my own," replied she, "and I do not know its parents. I am the wife of a poor soldier, my worthy sir, and I have travelled from beyond Berlin a great way; my husband had been away from me three years, and I wanted to see him again—for I loved him dearly. My own two little children I left with their grandmother, and I sold every thing I did not absolutely want at home, that I might carry him a little trifle of money. Accordingly I set out, and got to the end of my journey just as my husband had marched with his corps to drive a party of Austrians from some little village; so when it was all over, and they had done what they had been ordered, I ran to the place to meet him."
Here the poor woman burst into tears. "And when I got there he was dying of his wounds; yet he knew me, and stretched out his hand, saying, 'Oh, Annette! our children.' These were his last words. I thought I should have died too, but God willed, for the sake of our little ones and this babe, that I should live. In the same house where my poor husband expired, was the wife of an Austrian soldier, who died two days afterwards, and left this babe, which nobody on earth seemed to take care about. Almost all the village had been burned down, and all the inhabitants had run away; so that when our soldiers marched, I begged them to take the poor child with them; but then they said to me, 'What could we
