t
looks on their cudgels. With these feelings they listened the more
readily to the advice of the stranger, who had been washing himself in
the meanwhile, to lift their insolent enemy, as he was fast asleep and
seemed quite senseless, upon the top of one of their waggons, and to
lay him, when they got to the bottom, in a corn field, that he might
find himself there when he awoke from his fit. There was no difficulty
in doing this, as the musicians had been paid and were gone, and the
landlord was busied in the kitchen.

* * * * *

In the depths of the forest, where the iron forges were at work, and
where in the midst of dark rocks by the side of a waterfall the shouts
and the hammering of the workmen resounded far and wide in rivalry
with the roar of the torrent, Edward the next evening met the
inspector of the mines, to talk over some business of importance with
him, and to give him some instructions from Herr Balthasar. The fire
in the vast furnace glared wildly through the dusk: the brighter glow
of the half-molten iron, the myriads of dazzling sparks that spurted
up from the anvil beneath the sledges of the sturdy smiths, the dark
forms moving through the large boarded shed, into which the trunk of a
tree in full leaf had forced its way, overshadowing the bellows in the
corner with its branches--this singular night piece attracted all
Edward's attention, when loud talking and laughter arose among the
workmen. Some one had just been telling them how Conrad, when he was
drunk, had been treated by the peasants the day before, and how to his
extreme annoyance he had awaked that morning in the midst of a corn
field. The story seemed to interest everybody so much, that their work
was suffered to stand still for a while.

"It serves him right," cried one of the broad-shouldered journeymen,
"the vapouring coxcomb! He is the most insufferable and rudest miner
in the whole country for miles round; and fancies he knows everything
better than his neighbours, and is the cleverest fellow in the world."

"They say he is running about like a madman, and as if the fiend had
got hold of him," continued the narrator; "for now the very thing of
which he has bragged from morning to night, is at an end: he has not
only been forced to see corn growing in the field, he has lain in the
midst of it."

Edward turned to the speaker and askt: "Michael, are you quite well
again already, that you come out thus