oreman was getting
after the workmen, who were simulating great industry, and the
school-children were wandering from room to room. All this activity
delighted old Huerlin. He looked on with cheerful interest, pretending
not to hear the malicious remarks of the workmen; he plunged his hands
into the deep pockets of his greasy coat, and twisted his charity
trousers, much too long and wide for him, into various spiral forms in
which his legs looked like corkscrews. He pulled continually at a
chipped clay pipe, which was not lit but still smelt of tobacco. His
approaching entry into his new abode, from which he promised himself a
new and fairer existence, filled the old drunkard with delighted
curiosity and excitement.

While he was watching the laying of the new stairs and silently
estimating the quality and probable durability of the thin pine boards,
he suddenly felt himself pushed to one side. As he turned in the
direction of the street, he saw a workman with a large step-ladder
which with great care and many props he was attempting to set up on the
sloping surface of the street. Huerlin betook himself to the opposite
side of the street, leaned against a stone, and followed the activity
of the workman with great attention. The latter had now set up his
ladder and made it secure; he climbed it and began to scratch about
in the mortar over the main door with a view of taking down the old
sign. His efforts filled the ex-manufacturer with interest and also
with pain, as he thought of the bygone days, of the many glasses of
wine or spirits he had drunk under the now disappearing sign, and of
the past in general. He took no little joy in observing that the iron
arm was so firmly fixed in the wall that the workman had much trouble
in getting it loose. Under the poor old sign there had been so many
infernally good times! When the workman began to swear, the old man
smiled; when he pulled and pushed and twisted and knocked, when he
began to sweat and almost fell off the ladder, the spectator felt no
little satisfaction. Finally he went away, and came back in a quarter
of an hour with an iron-saw. Huerlin perceived that now it was all over
with the venerable ensign. The saw bit shriekingly into the good iron;
after a few moments the arm began to droop, and finally fell with a
rattle and a clang on the pavement.

Huerlin crossed the street. "I say, Mr. Workman," he begged humbly,
"give me the thing; it's of no value now."

"W