But that is the
unfortunate part of it, when a peasant acquires too much property. When
you come out on the other side of that oak wood, you walk for half an
hour by the clock through his fields! And everything arranged in first
rate order all the way! The day before yesterday I drove my team through
the rye and wheat, and may God punish me if anything more than the
horses' heads showed up above the tops. I thought I should be drowned."

"Where did he get it all?" asked the receiver.

"Oh!" cried the horse-dealer, "there are a lot more estates like this
around here; they call them Oberhofs. And if they do not surpass many a
nobleman's, my name isn't Marx. The land has been held intact for
generations. And the good-for-nothing fellow has always been economical
and industrious, you'll have to say that much for him I You saw, didn't
you, how he worked away merely to save the expense of paying the
blacksmith a few farthings? Now his daughter is marrying another rich
fellow; she'll get a dowry, I tell you! I happened to pass the linen
closet; flax, yarn, tablecloths and napkins and sheets and shirts and
every possible kind of stuff are piled up to the ceiling in there. And
in addition to that the old codger will give her six thousand thalers in
cash! Just glance about you; don't you feel as if you were stopping with
a count?"

During the foregoing dialogue the vexed horse-dealer had quietly put his
hand into his money-bag and to the twenty gold pieces had added, with an
air of unconcern, six more. The Justice appeared again at the door, and
the other, without looking up, said, grumbling; "There are the
twenty-six, since there is no other way out of it."

The old peasant smiled ironically and said: "I knew right well that you
would buy the horse, Mr. Marx, for you are trying to find one for thirty
pistoles for the cavalry lieutenant in Unna, and my little roan fills
the bill as if she had been made to order. I went into the house only to
fetch the gold-scales, and could see in advance that you would have
bethought yourself in the meantime."

The old man, who one moment displayed something akin to hurry in his
movements and the next the greatest deliberation, depending upon the
business with which he happened to be occupied, sat down at the table,
slowly and carefully wiped off his spectacles, fastened them on his
nose, and began carefully to weigh the gold pieces. Two or three of them
he rejected as being too light. The