inued, as he strolled up and down the shop examining the
tools, timber, &c., "you seem to have a good deal of queer stuff about
here. Now here's a funny little bit of a mallet. I suppose your
children amuse themselves with that. And the broad-axe yonder, that's
for your apprentice boys, I presume; isn't it?" With that he whirled
the great heavy mallet--which Reinhold could not wield, and which
Friedrich could only use with difficulty--up to the rooftree, did the
like with the ponderous broad-axe which Master Martin worked with, and
then rolled great casks about as if they had been bowls; and, seizing a
thick unshaped stave, he cried, "Master, this seems good sort of
oak-heart. I reckon it will fly like glass!" and banged it against the
grindstone, so that it broke right across into two pieces with a loud
report.

"My good sir," Master Martin cried, "all I beg of you is, don't smash
up that two-fudder cask there, or bring the whole workshop down about
our ears. You might make a mallet of one of the rafters; and, by way of
a broad-axe to your liking, I'll send to the Town Hall for Roland's
sword, three ells long."

"That would do for me nicely," said the young man, with sparkling eyes.
But presently he cast them down, and spoke in a gentler tone:

"All I was thinking, dear Master Martin, was that your work needed men
of thews and sinews. But perhaps I was a little hasty in swaggering as
to my strength. Take me into your employ all the same. I will do what
work you give me in first-rate style, you will see."

Master Martin looked him in the face, and had to own to himself that he
had probably never seen nobler or more thoroughly honest features.
Indeed he felt somehow that the young man's face stirred up a dim
remembrance of someone whom he had known and esteemed for a very long
time. But this would not become clear, although, for this cause, he at
once agreed to employ the young man, merely stipulating that he should
produce proper certificates to prove that he belonged to the craft.

Reinhold and Friedrich meanwhile had finished setting up the cask at
which they were working, and were putting on the first hoops. At such
times they were in the habit of singing, and they now begun a pretty
song, in the "goldfinch manner" of Adam Puschmann. At this Conrad (such
was the new-comer's name) shouted out from the planing bench where
Master Martin had set him to work, "Ugh! what a cheeping and chirping.
Sounds as though the m