essness, he sat at his ease on the turf, feeling the pleasing
warmth of the sun on his withered skin. He gazed over the scene of his
former activities and misfortunes, and waited without impatience till
some one should come who would give him a light for his cigar-stump.
Shrill hammering from a workshop, the distant ring of the anvil in a
smithy, the low rumbling of a far-away wagon came up to his heights
with a little dust from the road and thin smoke from chimneys of all
sizes, to show him that down in the town people were bravely toiling
and sweating, while Karl Huerlin sat peacefully untroubled on his throne
at a dignified distance from it all.

About four o'clock he came quietly into the room of the weaver, who was
moving his shuttle regularly back and forth. He waited a while to see
if there might not, after all, be some bread and cider, but the weaver
only laughed at him and sent him away. He returned disappointed to his
post of observation, growling to himself; there he put in an hour or
more in a sort of half sleep, and then watched the coming of evening to
the narrow valley. It was still warm and comfortable up there, but his
cheerful mood departed little by little; in spite of his slackness, he
began to get horribly bored doing nothing, and his thoughts returned
incessantly to the snack that he had missed. He saw a tall glass full
of cider standing in front of him, yellow and sparkling and perfumed
with sweet herbs. He imagined how he would have taken it up, the cool
round glass, and gulped down a good draught at the first, drinking then
more sparingly. He gave an angry sigh as often as he woke from the
delightful dream; and his anger went out against the pitiless manager,
the weaver, the miserable skinflint, the little stumpy fellow, the
oppressor, the seller of his soul, the poisonous Jew. After he had
fumed enough at the manager, he began to be sorry for himself and fell
into a tearful mood; but finally he made a resolution to work the next
day.

He did not see how the valley grew paler and filled with soft shadows,
and how the clouds took on a rosy tint; he was blind to the mild, sweet
evening colors of the sky and the mysterious blue that came over the
distant mountains. He saw nothing but that lost glass of cider, the
toil that waited inevitably for him on the morrow, and the hardness of
his lot. Those were the kind of thoughts he had been used to having
when he had passed a day without getting anythin