his hand to judge of the value of the
silver, Conrad reddened up to his eyes. He bought it at a high price.

The box was sold last. Mike hemmed aloud, and looked at his brother in
defiance: he bid a large sum. Conrad bid a florin more, without looking
up, and pretended to count the buttons on his coat. Mike, looking
saucily around, went still higher. None of the strangers present
interfered, and the brothers were both determined not to give way. Each
comforted himself with the thought that he would only have to pay half
of what he bid, and so they continued to raise the price up to more
than five times its real value,--when it was knocked down to Conrad for
twenty-eight florins.

Then he looked up for the first time, and his face was entirely
changed. Spite and mockery leered out of his glaring eyes, his open
mouth, and his protruding mien. "When you die, I'll make you a present
of the chest to lie in," he said to Mike, trembling with rage: and
those were the last words he had spoken to him for fourteen years.

The story of the chest was an excellent theme for fun and waggery in
the village. Whenever anybody met Conrad, something was said about the
mean way in which Mike had acted toward him; and Conrad talked himself
into a rage against his brother, which increased with every word he
said.

The brothers were of different dispositions in all things, and went
their different ways. Conrad kept a cow, which he would yoke with the
cow of his neighbor Christian to do field-work. When there was nothing
to be done afield, he broke stones on the turnpike for fifteen
creutzers, or about five cents, a day. He was very near-sighted. When
he struck a flint to light his pipe, he always held his face very near
the spunk, to see whether it was lit. All the village called him "blind
Conrad." He was short and thick-set.

Mike was the opposite of all this. He was tall and lank, and walked
with a firm step. He dressed like a farmer, not because he was one,
(for he was not,) but because it was of advantage to him in his
business. He dealt in old horses; and people have great faith in a
horse bought of a man who is dressed in farmers' clothes. Mike was what
is called in Germany a "spoiled blacksmith,"--one who had deserted his
trade and lived by dickering. He rented out and sold his fields, and
lived like a gentleman. He was a person of importance in the whole
country round. In a circuit of twenty miles--in Wurtemberg, in
Sigmaringen