mong the cities and people of the plains. All
their money was gone, and they had nothing left but some curious,
old-fashioned pieces of gold plate, the last remnants of their
ill-gotten wealth.

"Suppose we turn goldsmiths?" said Schwartz to Hans, as they entered the
large city. "It is a good knave's trade; we can put a great deal of
copper into the gold, without any one's finding it out."

The thought was agreed to be a very good one; they hired a furnace, and
turned goldsmiths. But two slight circumstances affected their trade:
the first, that people did not approve of the coppered gold; the second,
that the two elder brothers, whenever they had sold anything, used to
leave little Gluck to mind the furnace, and go and drink out the money
in the ale-house next door. So they melted all their gold, without
making money enough to buy more, and were at last reduced to one large
drinking-mug, which an uncle of his had given to little Gluck, and which
he was very fond of, and would not have parted with for the world;
though he never drank anything out of it but milk and water. The mug was
a very odd mug to look at. The handle was formed of two wreaths of
flowing golden hair, so finely spun that it looked more like silk than
like metal, and these wreaths descended into, and mixed with, a beard
and whiskers, of the same exquisite workmanship, which surrounded and
decorated a very fierce little face, of the reddest gold imaginable,
right in the front of the mug, with a pair of eyes in it which seemed to
command its whole circumference. It was impossible to drink out of the
mug without being subjected to an intense gaze out of the side of these
eyes; and Schwartz positively averred that once, after emptying it full
of Rhenish seventeen times, he had seen them wink! When it came to the
mug's turn to be made into spoons, it half broke poor little Gluck's
heart; but the brothers only laughed at him, tossed the mug into the
melting-pot, and staggered out to the ale-house; leaving him, as usual,
to pour the gold into bars, when it was all ready.

When they were gone, Gluck took a farewell look at his old friend in the
melting-pot. The flowing hair was all gone; nothing remained but the red
nose, and the sparkling eyes, which looked more malicious than ever.
"And no wonder," thought Gluck, "after being treated in that way." He
sauntered disconsolately to the window, and sat himself down to catch
the fresh evening air, and escape the