Part 1

Produced by Al Haines.

*THE MYSTERIOUS BASKET*

*OR*

*The Foundling*

*A Story for Boys and Girls*

London GALL AND INGLIS, 25 PATERNOSTER SQUARE; _AND EDINBURGH_.

*CONTENTS*

CHAPTER

I. THE UNWELCOME DISCOVERY II. THE VILLAGE MUSICIAN III. THE NEW-FASHIONED NURSE IV. THE BIRD-CATCHER V. THE SINGULAR MEETING VI. THE UNDESERVED PUNISHMENT VII. THE TOWN MUSICIAN VIII. THE CORRESPONDENCE IX. THE JOURNEY ON THE ICE X. THE SICK-BED XI. THE MISTAKE XII. THE UNEXPECTED DISCOVERY XIII. THE BAD RECEPTION XIV. THE REUNION

THE WOOD-GATHERER

*THE*

*MYSTERIOUS BASKET.*

*CHAPTER I.*

*THE UNWELCOME DISCOVERY.*

"They are wondrous merry to-night in the upper inn," said Hicup (the landlord of the one lower down the village) to his wife, who was turning over the leaves of the almanac. He sulkily threw his cap off his head, and flung himself into an easy-chair.--"All the windows are lighted up in the principal room, and there is no end to the strumming of fiddles; the beer-room is swarming with customers and strangers, whose conveyances are standing before the door as a show to torment me. Why does no one ever come our way now? Although the wooden arm holding the beer-can stretches itself out ever so far, inviting the travellers to come in, not an individual enters the door, not a turn do we get!--Is it any wonder, then, if the beer in the cellar turns sour, and that the last customer who found his way here by chance, was frightened away by it? But this is always the way in the world,--where pigeons are, there pigeons fly."

"The people must be bewitched," said Dame Hicup, in a stammering voice.

Hicup looked attentively at his wife, and then at the brandy bottle, which stood near her in a corner cupboard.

"So you have been at the brandy again, you old witch, and half-emptied the bottle!" said our host in a rage, seizing his stick. "Wait, I will give you"----. A loud knocking at the window-shutter interrupted both the sentence and the intended castigation.

"Who's there?" he bawled out.

"A poor woman, who begs a lodging for the night," was the answer.

"A poor woman," continued Hicup sullenly. "Such guests are always to be had; you had better go up to the other inn, you will be more comfortable there than with us."

Dame Hicup, to whom this interruption was most opportune, having a due regard for her bones, became, all of a sudden, compassionate. "He who sends the poor from his door," she began, "to him Heaven will not send the rich;" and, without waiting for the assent of her husband, she stepped across the room, and opened the door. A woman, poorly clad, with a large handkerchief hanging behind her head, and a basket on her back, stood before her.

"Come in, come in," said Dame Hicup invitingly, bringing her into the room.

"Have you a passport?" gruffly demanded the landlord.

"Yes; here it is;" and the woman drew from her pocket a piece of folded paper, which she handed to the master of the inn, who, without looking at it, said, "Where are you going?"

"To Neiderhaslich."

"What's your occupation? What are you carrying?"

"I deal in crockery and stoneware; therefore I must take care, and put down my basket gently."

"Umph! umph!" growled Hicup; then, turning to his wife, he muttered in a tolerably audible voice, "Do you mean to give the woman a bed in the low room? It is not the first time that such gentry have packed up all they could get, and gone off during the night, finding their way out by the window."

The stranger had heard every word; but far from seeming offended, merely said, "You need not put straw in the room for me, as any corner in an out-house, or in a stable, will do well enough."

"All the stalls are empty, the more's the pity," replied Dame Hicup; "so if you prefer being there,"----

"Oh! yes," eagerly interrupted the traveller, going to lift up her basket again.

"Leave that where it is," said the suspicious Hicup, who saw in it security for the reckoning; "it will be safer here, and more readily lifted on again, than in the stable."

"Could we not make a bargain?" asked the landlady insinuatingly; "such brittle goods are always wanted."

"No, no," replied the stranger hastily; "everything in the basket is bespoke, and carefully packed up; I would lose my custom were I to open it. Perhaps another time"----

"Oh! there is no haste," answered Dame Hicup; "the thought only happened to come into my head."

The stranger quickly swallowed some liquid, took a piece of bread in her hand, and, under the pretext of being very tired, went away, accompanied by the hostess, who wished to show her where she was to sleep.

Our host, meanwhile, was still sitting in his arm-chair, thinking with envy of his rival, the landlord of the upper inn. The moment his wife came back, she made her way straight to the basket, with the intention of having a peep at its contents in spite of its cover. The threatening voice, however, of her husband defeated her purpose. "Hands off, there! I see you are dying with curiosity to know what is in the basket; but, as a punishment for your brandy-drinking, you shall not get leave to touch it; and this is a far less punishment than you deserve."

In a very discontented mood, but dreading the anger of her husband, Dame Hicup sat down again at the table. All was so quiet, that gradually the eyes of both closed, and, not being disturbed with much light, as the candle was burnt out, they fell asleep.

Suddenly Dame Hicup started up,--"Do you want anything?" she asked.

"No," answered her partner, angry at being awakened; "but, yes, I would like to be the landlord of the inn up there."

After these few words, all was quiet again, until a kind of creaking noise was heard, and a half-suppressed cry struck their ears; at which Hicup, terrified, sprang from his chair. "Wife! wife!" he shouted, shaking the Dame; "do you not hear?--thieves are breaking in!"

No thieves broke in, but the voices of two children broke out into a cry, and, at the same time, the basket creaked and moved. With eyes wide open, the angry landlord stared at the mysterious basket. His wife, on whose mind the truth seemed to flash, hastily pulled away the cover, and saw, to her no small dismay, the heads of two children lying close together. She clasped her hands in terror, while her husband muttered to himself,--"Fine earthenware indeed! Out of such clay are we all made."

"Come! come!" quickly cried his wife, dragging him after her; "a thought strikes me!" It struck the good man too, when they had sought the stable in vain for the owner of the basket. Hicup again wished to make use of his stick to put his wife in remembrance that she had brought the vagabond into the house; but Dame Hicup retorted, throwing the blame on her husband, who, by preventing her looking into the basket, had given the woman time to escape. Our hostess examined minutely the foundlings and their cradle, and our host gave vent to his wrath in every variety of words.

"Now, truly, we have got all at once precious guests!" he said, laughing scornfully. "Fine food this for the village gossips! But he who has the misfortune, need not concern himself about the joking. Wife, if you don't get rid instantly of the squalling brats, you shall pay dearly for it. We have scarce bread enough for ourselves, and are we to divide it with cast-away infants? Take them up to the landlord at the other end of the village, from whose table plenty crumbs fall to keep them. It is a good thing that we have neither servant-maid nor boy in the house to carry tales."

By this time, Dame Hicup had lifted the children out of the basket, and again, by dint of hushing, made them quiet. They fixed their eyes on their new nurse, and stretched out their little arms in the air. They were both boys, of the same size, remarkably alike, and about seven or eight months old.

"They are twins," said Dame Hicup with the greatest certainty; "as for their mother, the woman who left them is too old, and their linen too fine."

"Would it were coarse as hemp!" interrupted the wrathful landlord, "to hang the vagrant. Make haste, I tell you, and free the house of these urchins; put some brandy into their milk, that they may sleep soundly, and then make the landlord of the upper inn a present of them."

The Dame did as she was bid, without making the slightest attempt to induce her husband to keep the deserted infants. She mixed the brandy with the milk, which the children greedily swallowed, and soon after fell asleep.

With one small burden under each arm, the mistress of the inn left her house late in the night. When she returned with empty hands in about half-an-hour, her husband, who was anxiously waiting, cried out to her in great glee,--"So you have really got rid of them! tell me how."

"There were too many people in the inn for me to venture within the door," answered his wife; "but at the outside of the entrance a travelling carriage was standing, whose driver had gone seemingly into the beer-room to get a glass of something. I heard a loud snoring from some one in the back seat; but in the front there was nothing but parcels and packages; so I laid the one youngster softly down on the top of them, and the other I slipped into a horse's manger which was close to the door of the inn."

"Thank our stars!" said worthy Master Hicup, "that we have escaped at the expense of only a good fright."

*CHAPTER II.*

*THE VILLAGE MUSICIAN.*

It was already far past midnight, and still the dance in the salle in the upper inn had not ceased. Never had the dancers been more indefatigable at their hardest work than they were now, as they panted for breath, and glowed with heat. More and more wearied became the musicians, as they wetted their parched throats alternately with beer and brandy.

"Let us have the grandfather's dance for a finish!" cried the boldest dancer--one who was always last at work, and therefore last at the dance--to the young girls, who were preparing to go away. "Holloa! you fiddlers, play us something sprightly, and don't spare either your breadth or your bones. The grandfather's dance! do you hear?" and seizing the hand of his partner, he began to sing in a loud voice,

"When our grandsire took our granddame home, The lady was bride, and he bridegroom."

The player of the clarionet blew until his thin cheeks were puffed out like a drum, and his eyes almost started out of their sockets. The violin-player showed equal zeal in the use of his bow; while the violincello sounded mightily; and the tones of the flute pierced through bones and marrow. When the dance was finished, its hero, wiping the dew from his forehead, addressed his companions in amusement, saying, "All's well that ends well;" and drinking a glass of cold beer, he left the inn, accompanied by the whole party, who went shouting and laughing through the silent village, disturbing the quiet of its inhabitants.

"Young blood is warm," said the landlord, as he heard the noise, and was extinguishing the lights in the salle.

A traveller, who had been prevented by the uproar of the dancers and the sound of music from going to bed, heard the remark of the landlord, and replied, with asperity, "Certainly a noble way of exercising youthful spirits to destroy the night's rest of industrious peasants, to waste the earnings of honest parents, and to ruin their own health. Such a dancing-room is a chapel of Satan, and the landlord and the musicians are the priests."

Had the speaker been a common person, assuredly the landlord would have poured out his wrath on him. He contented himself, however, by saying to the musicians, when the stranger had left, "That fellow must surely be a Methodist, a Quaker, or a Herrnhuter! Were all the world of his way of thinking, we should soon be ruined."

The musicians nodded their assent to this remark; and after dividing their gains, they likewise left the house.

It was quite dark, therefore no wonder that the tired and not perfectly sober band had great difficulty in finding their way down the flight of steps which led from the house to the street. The violincellist missed his footing, and rolled from the top to the bottom of the stairs. A crashing noise announced his arrival on the ground, and also the fate of the instrument.

"So the violincello is in the mud!" cried the clarionet-player, with the utmost stoical indifference, from the top of the stairs.

"Not at all; quite the reverse!" replied the prostrate fiddler, with equal calmness; "the mud is in the violincello." He raised himself up from the instrument, which had so broken his fall, that he felt not much the worse of it; and amidst jokes and laughter, the damage done to the violincello was examined, and was found to be considerable, as the back part of it was entirely broken to pieces.

"I have heard my father say," began the flute-player, in a tone of condolence, "that the more a violincello was glued together, the finer were its tones."

At this moment sounds were heard, not exactly like the tones of a violin, but rather resembling those of an oboe. The artists, amazed, looked round for their invisible companion, but saw nothing. Again the sound was heard, and more distinctly. It was the voice of a crying child, that seemed to come from a manger close beside them. As soon as the musicians had satisfied themselves, by seeing as well as hearing, with the exception of the bassist, they all took to flight.

"I have children enough to feed," thought the flute-player.

"And I, I have scarcely bread for myself," said the player on the clarionet.

"My wife would scratch out my eyes," ejaculated the violin-player, "were I to bring a foundling into the house."

Kummas, the violincellist, who had fallen down the stairs, felt a spark of pity for the poor child, whose bitter cries broke the stillness of the night. He went up the steps again, in order to acquaint the landlord with what had been found, and to induce him to take the infant under his care.

But he found the house-door firmly locked, and all his knocking and calling remained unanswered. This deafness, however, of the master of the inn had nothing to do with hard-heartedness, as he knew not of the poor child, whose cold cradle was becoming every moment more uncomfortable.

Sunk in profound meditation, the village musician now stood before the screaming infant. A complete revolution seemed to be taking place in his mind,--one of those sudden, incomprehensible, and unlooked for changes which sometimes passes over the spirit of man. He had seen, with utter indifference, hundreds of young blooming creatures led into much evil by the wild excess of dancing; indeed, helped them on by his music, without his conscience ever having reproached him. Beer and brandy were his gods. Them he had worshipped; and his memory could not call up a single action that he had done in accordance with the will of his Creator. But the hard crust of his heart now gave way. Feelings came over him like those with which, as a child, he had regarded pictures of the manger where his Saviour lay cradled, given him by his pious parents at the good Christmas time, to keep him in remembrance of the sacred event. Now there lay before him, in such a manger, a helpless infant, stretching out its little arms towards him. Kummas remembered the long forgotten words of the Lord Jesus, "Whoso shall receive one such little child in my name, receiveth me." He took up the infant, pressed it tenderly to his heart, spoke to it caressingly, silently promising never to leave it, or forsake it. Already he received the reward of his first good deed. An undescribable joy, such as the most intoxicating draught had never caused, filled his whole soul, and made everything appear brighter in his eyes. Softer blew the night air on his burning face. More beautiful shone the silver stars; and even the voice of the village watchman appeared melodious, as he greeted the coming day with the words,

"Jesus' goodness has no end, It is every morning new!"

The foundling appeared to be neither bad tempered, nor accustomed to very careful nursing. Quicker than Kummas hoped, it became quiet, and fell asleep. He remembered his broken violincello, and, gently as possible, he laid the little sleeper in the musical cradle, carried it carefully, and began in this fashion his pilgrimage to the next village, and to his miserable cottage, into which he brought his little clarionet, as he sportingly called the child, in safety. Only once had he found it necessary, before day-break, to set the new-fashioned cradle in motion, and to sing, "Hush! hush!"

*CHAPTER III.*

*THE NEW-FASHIONED NURSE.*

"Have you not made a mistake, neighbour?" asked Anne Maria, the peasant into whose house Kummas had gone very early in the morning. "The tavern is lower down the village, and I keep no brandy."

For the first time for many years, Kummas felt his face grow red. "I wish to buy a can of milk," he replied.

"Milk!" exclaimed the peasant, astonished. "This must be before your end! I have certainly heard that milk-drinkers may become brandy-drinkers; but never the reverse."

Kummas patiently endured the rebuke of the good woman, as a punishment for his former mode of life. He then continued, "If you could give me the milk new from the cow, and still warm, I would like it better. I have got a guest. The stork last night brought me a little child; and, as you have children, I wish you to tell me how it must be treated and nursed."

"Go away!" said the woman angrily; "I have no time for your foolish jests."

"Well!" answered Kummas, "if you will not believe my words, you will, perhaps, believe your own eyes."

It may be imagined how great was the astonishment of the peasant, when, in a few minutes, Kummas returned with the infant in his arms. When her surprise at the unexpected appearance had somewhat abated, she said to Kummas, at the same time laying her hand on his shoulder, "Neighbour, you are really better than I gave you credit for, and are an honest man. That is a splendid child. God bless it! Stout and strong as a young lion. Now he opens his pretty blue eyes. So you would like something to drink, my fine fellow? Eh! Haste, Hannah, and bring us some milk from the cow," she said, turning to a young girl who was beside her; "and now, let me see if you are rightly dressed. There, neighbour, hold the young rascal, until I bring something else to put on him. He is so strong that you may hold him upright already."

Kummas knew not how to hold the half-naked child; and from pure terror, lest he might hurt it, allowed it almost to fall out of his arms. He paid particular attention to what the peasant did as she dressed it again, and gave it the warm milk, which it seemed to like very much.

"And how sensible it is!" began again the good woman. "Does it not drink out of the cup just like one of ourselves? Hark ye, neighbour, you must just leave the youngster with me."

"No! no!" replied Kummas most decidedly.

"I will give you a bottle of brandy for him," again said the peasant.

"I will not give him for a whole cask!" exclaimed the musician.

"Indeed! that from you says much. But what will come of the child when you go out to play at night?" asked the kind woman.

"I do not mean to play any longer," answered Kummas.

"Are you in earnest?" said Anne Maria. "If so, heaven be praised! for truly the beer-fiddling is a wretched sort of life,--a way of living that makes weak legs and red faces. I have seen all such persons die in poverty and misery; for they almost all took to brandy drinking; and you were far on the road yourself."

Once more Kummas felt ashamed at the truthful words of his neighbour, who kindly, however, added, "Don't take amiss what I say. I mean well to you. Every morning I will give you milk for the foundling, and will look after its clothes. And I have nothing to say against your playing at a respectable marriage, or on a feast-day, when I will take good care of your youngster in your absence. But what do you call him?"

"He has no doubt been baptised," answered Kummas; "however, as I know not his right name, I will just call him Christlieb Fundus."

Had the poor child been forcibly thrust upon the village in which Kummas lived for maintenance, in all likelihood the inhabitants would have resisted doing anything for it. As the case stood, it was quite the reverse. A blessing seemed to have come along with the foundling. Everybody was curious to see the new-fashioned cradle; and no one came empty-handed; so that Kummas saw himself in possession of different articles of food, clothes for the child, and other things,--all unlooked for, and most unexpected; while he himself rose in the estimation of the villagers,--an advantage which formerly he had neither known nor prized.

Some weeks had passed away, when one morning Kummas received a visit from one of his former companions, in the shape of Schubert, the flute-player.

The interior of the small apartment presented to the visitor, at his entrance, a singular enough appearance. His eye fell first on the well-known large violin, which, still without its back, had its two sides supported by rounded pieces of wood,--such as cradles usually have. On the soft bedding, which filled the hollow space, lay a sleeping infant, whose rosy cheeks told of health and plenty. A few steps from this sat Kummas at a low table, which was covered with wire, small pieces of wood, and various kinds of implements. On the floor were scattered about sauce-pans, pots, and all sorts of broken earthenware, waiting to be mended by the hands of the late musician, who, at that moment, was occupied repairing an old bird-cage. A string was fastened to his right foot, the other end of which, being attached to the violincello-cradle, served as a means for setting it in motion whenever the little sleeper showed symptoms of restlessness.

"It is true, then, what I heard, but would not believe!" exclaimed Schubert, in a scornful voice. "So you have become an old woman!--a nurse! Are you mad, or"----

"I wish you good morning," said Kummas coolly, thus reminding his comrade of the omitted salutation. "You ask how I am? and I answer quite well. Never was better in my life."

"That shows me you are a fool!" replied Schubert. "Have I not children myself; and do I not know how I am tormented at nights by their squalling and screaming, not to speak of the thousand things my wife has to do for them?"

"It is true," said Kummas, "that Master Fundus there sometimes makes a noise during the night, especially just now, when he is getting his teeth, and I am obliged to creep out of my warm bed, although ever so tired, take him in my arms, walk about with him, and sing until my throat is sore, and my arms aching."

"Am I not right, then?" said Schubert.

"My back too is like to break," continued Kummas, "when I put the rogue on his feet, and let him totter up and down the room."

"And so does my wife complain," added Schubert. "Teaching them to walk must be a perfect martyrdom."

Kummas nodded assent, and went on,--"Neither am I any longer my own master. I cannot go where I will, or remain as long away as I please. The youngster is as a chain round my leg, which I must drag about. Besides, I must work hard, as my Christlieb needs many odds and ends, though the people in the village are very kind, and often send us presents. Afterwards will come the numerous diseases of children,--scarlet fever, measles, hooping-cough, &c., and then farewell to sleep; and all my earnings must go to the doctor and apothecary."

"That is precisely my case!" exclaimed Schubert in a loud tone.