the midst of an animated
conversation with another woman. "They brought your old man home nasty,
didn't they?" she was saying: "he had the awfullest brick in his hat.
Well, if I'd seen them pour brandy into his beer, as they say they did,
I'd 'a' sent 'em flying."

"Yes," returned the woman: "he was in a shocking way,--just like a sack
of potatoes."

"And they say you thanked them so smartly. What did you say? They were
laughing so, I thought they would never get over it."

"Well, I said, says I, 'Thank you, men: God reward you!' Then they
asked, 'What for?' So I said, says I, 'Don't you always thank a man
when he brings you a sausage?' says I; 'and why shouldn't I thank you,'
says I, 'for bringing me a whole hog?' says I."

On hearing this, the teacher laid down his knife and fork: but, soon
resuming them, he reflected that, after all, necessity and passion were
the only true sources of wit and humor.

Whenever his feelings were outraged in this manner, he now fell back,
not upon mother Nature, but upon Grandmother Maurita, who gave him many
explanations on the manners and customs of the people. Many people took
it into their heads that the old woman had bewitched the schoolmaster.
Far from it. Much as he delighted to hold converse with her simple,
well-meaning heart, it would have been much more correct to have
accused Hedwig of some incantation, although the teacher had only seen
her once and had never exchanged a word with her. "Ha' ye gude counsel,
grandmammy?" These words he repeated to himself again and again. Though
uttered in the harsh mountain dialect, even this seemed to have
acquired a grace and loveliness from the lips it passed.

Yet he was far from yielding to this enchantment without summoning to
his aid all the force of his former resolves. To fall in love with a
peasant-girl! But, as usual, love was fertile in excuses. "She is
certainly the image of her grandmother, only fresher and lovelier, and
illuminated by the sun of the present time. 'Ha' ye gude counsel,
grandmammy?'"

One evening, as he was sitting by the old woman's side, upon the same
bench, the girl came home from the field with a sickle in her hand: her
cheeks were flushed,--perhaps from exercise: she carried something
carefully in her apron. Stepping up to her grandmother, she offered her
some blackberries covered with hazel-leaves.

"Don't you know the way to do, Hedwig?" said her grandmother: "you must
wait on the stranger firs