Stories of a Western Town | Page 6

to go now."
Mrs. Olsen looked as if she would have liked to exhort Lieders further;
but she shrugged her shoulders and followed her husband in silence.
"I wished you'd stay to breakfast, now you're here," Thekla urged out of
her imperious hospitality; had Kurt been lying there dead, the next meal
must have been offered, just the same. "I know, you aint got time to git
Mr. Olsen his breakfast, Freda, before he has got to go to the shops, and
my tea-kettle is boiling now, and the coffee'll be ready-- I GUESS you
had better stay."
But Mrs. Olsen seconded her husband's denial, and there was nothing
left Thekla but to see them to the door. No sooner did she return than
Lieders spoke. "Aint you going to take off them ropes?" said he.
"Not till you promise you won't do it."
Silence. Thekla, brushing a few tears from her eyes, scrutinized the
ropes again, before she walked heavily out of the room. She turned the
key in the door.
Directly a savory steam floated through the hall and pierced the cracks
about the door; then Thekla's footsteps returned; they echoed over the
uncarpeted boards.
She had brought his breakfast, cooked with the best of her homely skill.
The pork chops that he liked had been fried, there was a napkin on the
tray, and the coffee was in the best gilt cup and saucer.
"Here's your breakfast, papa," said she, trying to smile.
"I don't want no breakfast," said he.
She waited, holding the tray, and wistfully eying him.
"Take it 'way," said he, "I won't touch it if you stand till doomsday,
lessen you untie me!"

"I'll untie your arm, papa, one arm; you kin eat that way."
"Not lessen you untie all of me, I won't touch a bite."
"You know why I won't untie you, papa."
"Starving will kill as dead as hanging," was Lieders's orphic response
to this.
Thekla sighed and went away, leaving the tray on the table. It may be
that she hoped the sight of food might stir his stomach to rebel against
his dogged will; if so she was disappointed; half an hour went by
during which the statue under the bedclothes remained without so much
as a quiver,
Then the old woman returned. "Aint you awful cramped and stiff,
papa?"
"Yes," said the statue.
"Will you promise not to do yourself a mischief, if I untie you?"
"No."
Thekla groaned, while the tears started to her red eyelids. "But you'll
git awful tired and it will hurt you if you don't get the ropes off, soon,
papa!"
"I know that!"
He closed his eyes again, to be the less hindered from dropping back
into his distempered musings. Thekla took a seat by his side and sat
silent as he. Slowly the natural pallor returned to the high forehead and
sharp features. They were delicate features and there was an air of
refinement, of thought, about Lieders's whole person, as different as
possible from the robust comeliness of his wife. With its keen
sensitive-ness and its undefined melancholy it was a dreamer's face.
One meets such faces, sometimes, in incongruous places and wonders
what they mean. In fact, Kurt Lieders, head cabinet maker in the

furniture factory of Lossing & Co., was an artist. He was, also, an
incomparable artisan and the most exacting foreman in the shops.
Thirty years ago he had first taken wages from the senior Lossing. He
had watched a modest industry climb up to a great business, nor was he
all at sea in his own estimate of his share in the firm's success. Lieders's
workmanship had an honesty, an infinite patience of detail, a daring
skill of design that came to be sought and commanded its own price.
The Lossing "art furniture" did not slander the name. No sculptor ever
wrought his soul into marble with a more unflinching conscience or a
purer joy in his work than this wood-carver dreaming over sideboards
and bedsteads. Unluckily, Lieders had the wrong side of the gift as well
as the right; was full of whims and crotchets, and as unpracti-cal as the
Christian martyrs. He openly defied expense, and he would have no
trifling with the laws of art. To make after orders was an insult to Kurt.
He made what was best for the customer; if the latter had not the sense
to see it he was a fool and a pig, and some one else should work for
him, not Kurt Lieders, BEGEHR!
Young Lossing had learned the business practically. He was taught the
details by his father's best workman; and a mighty hard and strict
master the best workman proved! Lossing did not dream that the
crabbed old tyrant who rarely praised him, who