they did not spare their throats, especially when
pretty Rose was present, but sang many an excellent song, their
pleasant voices harmonising well together. And whenever Frederick,
glancing shyly across at Rose, seemed to be falling into his melancholy
mood, Reinhold at once struck up a satirical song that he composed,
beginning, "The cask is not the cither, nor is the cither the cask," so
that old Herr Martin often had to let the croze-adze which he had
raised, sink again without striking and hold his big belly as it
wabbled from his internal laughter. Above all, the two journeymen, and
mainly Reinhold, had completely won their way into Martin's favour; and
it was not difficult to observe that Rose found a good many pretexts
for lingering oftener and longer in the workshop than she certainly
otherwise would have done.

One day Master Martin entered his open workshop outside the town-gate,
where work was carried on all the summer through, with his brow
weighted with thought Reinhold and Frederick were in the act of setting
up a small cask. Then Master Martin planted himself before them with
his arms crossed over his chest and said, "I can't tell you how pleased
I am with you, my good journeymen, but I am just now in a great
difficulty. They write me from the Rhine that this will be a more
prosperous wine-year than there ever has been before. A learned man
says that the comet which has been seen in the heavens will fructify
the earth with its wonderful tail, so that the glowing heat which
fabricates the precious metals down in the deepest mines will all
stream upwards and evaporate into the thirsty vines, till they prosper
and thrive and put forth multitudes of grapes, and the liquid fire with
which they are filled will be poured out into the grapes. It will be
almost three hundred years before such a favourable constellation
occurs again. So now we shall all have our hands full of work. And then
there's his Lordship the Bishop of Bamberg has written to me and
ordered a large cask. That we can't get done; and I shall have to look
about for another useful journeyman. Now I should not like to take the
first fellow I meet off the street amongst us, and yet the matter is
very urgent. If you know of a good journeyman anywhere whom you would
be willing to work with, you have only to tell me, and I will get him
here, even though it should cost me a good sum of money."

Hardly had Master Martin finished speaking when a young