ler. Some of the lads had
found him at the edge of the forest, on the spot where we had caught a
glimpse of him, looking like a ghostly apparition, as we rattled past
with the engine. There he was found standing in his shirt, and holding
his fiddle in both his hands pressed tightly to his breast.

As they drew near the village, he took his fiddle and played his
favorite waltz. Every eye was turned on the strange-looking man, and all
welcomed his return, as if he had risen from the grave.

"Give me a drink!" he exclaimed to the first person who held out a hand
to him. "I'm burnt up with thirst!"

A glass of water was brought him.

"Bah!" cried the old man; "'twere a sin to quench such a thirst as mine
with water; bring me some wine! Or has the horrid red cock drunk up all
my wine too?"

And again he fell to fiddling lustily, until they arrived at the spot of
the fire. He got down from the cart, and entered a neighbor's cottage.
All the folks pressed up to the old fiddler, tendering words of comfort,
and promising that they would all help him to rebuild his cottage.

"No, no!" replied Hans; "'tis all well. I have no home--I'm one of the
cuckoo tribe that has no resting-place of its own, and only now and then
slips into the swallow's nest. For the short time I have to live, I
shall have no trouble in finding quarters wherever I go. I can now climb
up into a tree again, and look down upon the world in which I have no
longer any thing to call my own. Ay, ay, 'twas wrong in me ever to have
had any thing of my own except my precious little fiddle here!"

No objection was raised to the reasoning of the strange old man, and the
country-folks from a distance went their ways home with the satisfaction
of knowing that the old fiddler was still alive and well. Hans properly
belonged to the whole country round about: his loss would have been a
public one: much as if the old linden-tree on the Landeck Hill close by
had been thrown down unexpectedly in the night Hans was as merry as a
grig when Caspar the smith gave him an old shirt, the carpenter Joseph a
pair of breeches--and so on. "Well, to be sure, folks may now say that I
carry the whole village on my back!" said he; and he gave to each
article of dress the name of the donor. "A coat indeed like this, which
a friend has worn nicely smooth for one, fits to a T. I was never at my
ease in a new coat; and you know I used always to go to the church, and
rub the sleeves in the w