ot
heard, being drowned in the uproarious laughter of the others. Here
Vefela found a rescuer whom nobody had expected. Her father's dog Nero,
who had followed her, suddenly sprang on Tralla's back, seized him by
the collar, and dragged him down. Vefela took him away from his victim
in all haste, and hurried on her way. From that time Nero was a power
in the village. The whole affair mortified Vefela greatly, and
confirmed her in her dislike to farmers and farmers' ways.

Vefela spent some weeks with her brother Melchior, in Ergenzingen. Here
too she was often sad; for Melchior had hard-hearted, stingy wife, who
hardly gave him enough to eat.

[Illustration: The squire of Ergenzingen.]

The squire of Ergenzingen, a widower with three children, frequently
came to Melchior's house; and one day he asked Vefela to marry him.
Vefela was disposed to consent; for, though not attached to the squire,
she was weary of her lonesome life, and hoped to derive pleasure from
being a kind mother to the children. But the manor-house farmer came
and told his daughter that the squire was a hard man, who had been
unkind to his first wife, and, besides, that Vefela could only be happy
with a man of great refinement. The squire was rejected. But his
proposal had been heard of in Ergenzingen; and the boys, with whom he
was unpopular on account of his strictness, came one night and strewed
bran all along the path between his house and Melchior's. The squire
forthwith began to hate the manor-house farmer and Vefela: she returned
with her father to the solitude of his roof.

Vefela would have done better to have followed her own counsel and
married the squire; but her doom was sealed, and she could not escape
it.

The life of the manor-house farmer seemed likely to end sooner than his
lawsuit. The strong man was sinking under petty ailments: the trouble
and chagrin so long suppressed had gnawed his core. For hours and hours
he would sit speechless in his arm-chair, only murmuring occasionally
an indistinguishable word to his dog Nero, whose head was on his
master's knee, while his faithful eyes looked up into his face. Vefela
could not be with him always, and he now felt doubly the dreariness of
his lot. He would have given any thing for the privilege of receiving a
guest in his warm, cosy room, only to have given or received a pinch of
snuff. He went to the window and looked out; he coughed when anybody
passed; but no one spoke to him, no