old enough to be so. She took off her owleyed spectacles, and, as she wiped the glasses with her handkerchief, said:—
“Thou dear Heaven! Is it possible? Did you never hear of the Christ of Andernach?”
Flemming answered in the negative.
“Thou dear Heaven!” continued the old woman. “It is a very wonderful story; and a true one, as every good Christian in Andernach will tell you. And it all happened before the death of my blessed man, four years ago; let me see,—yes, four years ago, come Christmas.”
Here the old woman stopped speaking, but went on with her knitting. Other thoughts seemed to occupy her mind. She was thinking, no doubt, of her blessed man, as German widows call their dead husbands. But Flemming having expressed an ardent wish to hear the wonderful story, she told it, in nearly the following words.
“There was once a poor old woman in Andernach whose name was Frau Martha, and she lived all alone in a house by herself, and loved all the Saints and the Blessed Virgin, and was as good as an angel, and sold tarts down by the Rheinkrahn. But her house was
