Only the money — he needed the ten marks. They talked no more.

A couple hundred paces further the gentleman entered a
house, waved him in, and they climbed up some stairs. At a door
on the second floor the man rang short and loud.

The boy stood on the top step of the stairway, full of fear. He
could still turn back and run away, he knew. But he followed the
man through the door that opened just at that moment.

Standing on the street again a half hour later, ten marks in his
pocket, he felt like laughing out loud from joy. If it was nothing
more than that! The pastor in his village had done that with him,
only he had not been friendly, but clumsy and rough, and had only
given him a couple of apples from the garden.

So that's how one could make money! And he had thought for
a moment on the stairs he was to be murdered!

The hundreds of thoughts that were ready to storm over him
were for the present drowned by a single one — eat, now, just eat!
Eat as soon as possible, and as much as possible! Eat! Eat and
drink![...]