hrough."

"There's something behind all that. Out with it."

"I'd like to see you make something out of it all."

"All in good time."

"Now, listen to me quietly. I'm not talking to you as squire now, but I
say this because I wish you well. If you stay here as you do now you'll
go to wreck. What are you waiting for?"

Florian was evidently struck by the force of this question. After a
considerable pause, Buchmaier went on:--

"I know how it is very well. It's just like getting up out of bed: let
it be ever so hard, you don't like to stay there; but the minute you're
up and doing you feel a great deal better. So take my advice, and go.
If there was war I should say, 'Florian, take two suits of clothes, and
if one won't wear the other will;' but even as it is you can make out
finely without going to butchering men. But stay here you can't: you
must go."

"But I can't go, and won't go; and I'd like to see who's going to make
me."

"That's neither here nor there. You needn't come the fiery game over
me. I know you go to see Crescence. Well, if you have luck you can come
and fetch her. But here you're not respected."

"Who says that? Why, squire, if this was anybody but you, I'd show him.
Who can say any thing against my reputation?"

"Not a soul; and that's the very reason you ought to go now."

"But I can't, and I won't."

"If you're short of change, I'll try to get you a loan from the
treasury of the commune."

"I tell you I'd rather rob the saints. I'd rather lay my hand on this
block and chop it off than touch a pittance out of the public chest."

"You're far gone: you want to make a ten-strike, and there are only
nine pins standing. Florian, Florian, consider, there's not only a
right and a left, but there's a straight road too. If you don't ask too
much you shall have any money to travel with,--not as a gift, but as a
loan. 'Only half your money's lost on a young loafer,' they always say:
don't take it amiss, though."

Florian answered, gnashing his teeth, "I didn't ask your money nor your
advice, and no one has a right to call me names."

"Well, I've done: I've nothing more to say. But, if you should think
better of it, come to see me again to-morrow. Good-bye."

He left Florian harrowed in his inmost soul. Whistling a lively air, he
sauntered down the village, looking every one in the face, as if to ask
them, with defiance, whether they did not respect him.

Crescence never knew that this inte