More Tales by Polish Authors

y are coming after you!' I only had time to run up to the window and call out: 'Good-bye, Basia; remember St. Stanislaw will be his patron!' That's all I said. Basia was confined shortly after, but I didn't see her again. So it was a good thing I said it, for now there'll always be something to remember me by."

"God be praised that it's so! but if it hadn't been a son----"

Maciej did not finish his sentence, however, for the offended shoemaker began to reprimand him sternly.

"You are talking nonsense, Maciej, and it is not for the first time! Does not the Church also give the name of St. Stanislawa? Besides, though I am a sinner as every man is, couldn't I guess that a word spoken at a moment like that would carry weight with the Almighty? Isn't everything in God's hand?"

Maciej looked down, and a deep sigh was the only testimony to the shoemaker's eloquence.

Stanislaw's explanation of the circumstances lightened our task very much, and when he had remembered that the mother