Read Online The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom - Free Book Online

wretched room then—it was always dark in this little cupboard of a kitchen. With a pot holder I snatched up the beaker and ran to the window in the dining room.
    Black. Black as fear itself.
    Still clutching the beaker I pounded down the five steps and through the rear door of the shop. Father, his jeweler’s glass in his eye, was bent over the shoulder of the newest apprentice, deftly selecting an infinitesimal part from the array before them on the workbench.
    I looked through the glass in the door to the shop, but Betsie, behind her little cashier’s desk, was talking to a customer. Not a customer, I corrected myself, a nuisance—I knew the woman. She came here for advice on watches and then bought them at that new place, Kan’s, across the street. Neither Father nor Betsie seemed to care that this was happening more and more.
    As the woman left I burst through the door with the telltale beaker.
    â€œBetsie!” I cried. “Oh Betsie, it’s black! How are we going to tell her? What are we going to do?”
    Betsie came swiftly from behind the desk and put her arms around me. Behind me, Father came into the shop. His eyes traveled from the beaker to Betsie to me.
    â€œAnd you did it exactly right, Corrie? In every detail?”
    â€œI’m afraid so, Father.”
    â€œAnd I am sure of it, my dear. But we must have the doctor’s verdict too.”
    â€œI’ll take it at once,” I said.
    And so I poured the ugly liquid into a small bottle and ran with it over the slippery, rain-washed streets of Haarlem.
    There was a new nurse at Dr. van Veen’s and I spent a miserable, silent half-hour in the waiting room. At last his patient left and Dr. van Veen took the bottle into his small laboratory.
    â€œThere is no mistake, Corrie,” he said as he emerged. “Your aunt has three weeks at the very most.”
    We held a family conference in the watch shop when I got back: Mama, Tante Anna, Father, Betsie, and me (Nollie did not get home from her teaching job until evening). We agreed that Tante Jans must know at once.
    â€œWe will tell her together,” Father decided, “though I will speak the necessary words. And perhaps,” he said, his face brightening, “perhaps she will take heart from all she has accomplished. She puts great store on accomplishment, Jans does, and who knows but that she is right!”
    And so the little procession filed up the steps to Tante Jans’s rooms. “Come in,” she called to Father’s knock, and added as she always did, “and close the door before I catch my death of drafts.”
    She was sitting at her round mahogany table, working on yet another appeal for her soldiers’ center. As she saw the number of people entering the room, she laid down her pen. She looked from one face to another, until she came to mine and gave a little gasp of comprehension. This was Friday morning, and I had not yet come up with the results of the test.
    â€œMy dear sister-in-law,” Father began gently, “there is a joyous journey which each of God’s children sooner or later sets out on. And, Jans, some must go to their Father empty-handed, but you will run to Him with hands full!”
    â€œAll your clubs . . . ,” Tante Anna ventured.
    â€œYour writings . . . ,” Mama added.
    â€œThe funds you’ve raised . . . ,” said Betsie.
    â€œYour talks . . . ,” I began.
    But our well-meant words were useless. In front of us the proud face crumpled; Tante Jans put her hands over her eyes and began to cry. “Empty, empty!” she choked at last through her tears. “How can we bring anything to God? What does He care for our little tricks and trinkets?”
    And then as we listened in disbelief she lowered her hands and, with tears still coursing down her face, whispered, “Dear Jesus, I thank You that we must come with empty hands. I thank You that You have done