dent, boasting that he had not been left behind when his
former _confratres_ had had a little convivial matin celebration.

And as he showed himself apt in the drill manual, he gained the favor
of the captain, and after only eight months he was duly appointed a
petty officer.

All this would have been correct and pleasing, and all mankind,
including Eynhofen, might have been satisfied with the life destiny of
Matthew Fottner.

But a worm was gnawing at the heart of the Bridge Farmer.

It ate and ate and gave him no peace by day or night.

When other people lose all their prospects, they sigh, tie a heavy
stone to their hopes, and sink them in the sea of forgetfulness.

A tenacious farmer does not do so; he keeps turning them over in his
mind to see whether he cannot save a part, if he is not to have the
whole.

And when the Bridge Farmer's anger had lost its edge, he again began to
brood and plan.

But because it was a matter that concerned book-learning, his own
wisdom did not satisfy him; so he resolved to go straight to the right
shop and ask a priest's advice.

The one at Eynhofen he did not trust; not since that time long ago,
when the priest had told him such barefaced lies about Greek.

But in Sintshausen, twelve miles off, there was a priest, the Reverend
Joseph Shoebower, that one could put confidence in.

Oh, but he was a shrewd one; a deputy in the diet, three times as
Catholic as the other "shepherds," and a hotheaded fighting-cock, who
regularly chewed up Liberals with his salad and who set the king's
Ministers dancing to the very maddest of tunes, until he finally got
the best-paid post in the whole bishopric. To him our farmer went, for
he would surely know some means of preventing such a robust churl as
Matthew Fottner from being lost to the Church.

So he asked him whether you couldn't grease some one's palm,--the
school at Freising, or the bishop, or some one.

"It is always a meritorious work," said the Reverend Shoebower, "when
one invests his money for Catholic purposes; but in this case it would
not do much good, for the certificate for admission to the university
can only be got by an examination. At least as long as the civil
power--I am sorry to say--still has the right to put in its oar in
educational matters. But something else can be done, Bridge Farmer,"
he said, "if you are set on having Matt Fottner enter the ministry at
all costs. There is a Collegium Germanicum in Rome, w