t as this stick of wood which I
am laying on the fire cares who burns it."

"I should be greatly interested in hearing by what process you have
thus reduced yourself to the hardness of a log of wood."

The doctor was anxious to avail himself of the unusual mood in
which he found the crabbed old fellow, to gain a better insight into
his character, even at the expense of prolonging Lenz's painful
uncertainty. He was not without hope of inducing Petrovitsch to advance
a sum of money which would enable Lenz at once to become a shareholder
in the new factory.

"You were eight years old when I went abroad," began Petrovitsch, "and
therefore know nothing about me."

"Begging your pardon, we heard a deal about the wild pranks of the--"

"Of the goatherd, I suppose. Thereby hangs a tale. For the forty-two
years that I was travelling by land and by sea, in all degrees of heat
and cold that man or beast can endure, that name pursued me like a dog,
without my having the sense to give it a kick that should silence it
forever.

"Our family consisted of only three brothers. Our father was proud, in
his way, of having us all boys; but children then were not thought so
much of as they are in these days. They had to learn to take care of
themselves. Fewer words, good or bad, were thrown them, and every one,
therefore, was made to go farther than a hundred do now. My brother
Lorenz, generally called by the family name, Lenz, the father of the
present Lenz, was the oldest; I was the youngest, and between us came
Mathes, a handsome fellow, who was carried away by that great butcher
Napoleon, and lost his life in Spain. I once visited the battlefield
where he fell, and saw a great hill under which all the dead bodies had
been huddled together. There was no telling any man's brother. But why
dwell upon that? Not long after our Mathes turned soldier, my brother
Lorenz went to Switzerland for three months, and took me with him. Who
so happy as I? My brother was a quiet, thoughtful man, regular and
exact as clock-work, and fearfully strict. I was a wild, ungovernable
child, inclined to no good, and with a special distaste to sitting
behind a work-bench. What does my brother do but take me, soon after
Candlemas, to a boy-sale at St. Gall? There were boy-sales held there
then every year, where the Swiss farmers came to buy farm-hands from
Suabia.

"As we were standing together on the market-place, a square-built
Appenzeller came along, an