om morning until night. He had hardly time to go down to the village
inn in the middle of the day and get a hot meal.

He would not allow himself to fall short in any way, and was
unremitting in his exertions.

But was this the condition on which, while a soldier, he had looked
back with such longing? This haste and breathless labour, this hurrying
from one thing to another without pause or rest?

He smiled bitterly to himself, and looked about him with dull, joyless
eyes. He was tired with his day's work, and his back ached with
fatigue; where was that joy of labour, which had formerly sustained
him, and had lightened the burden on his shoulders?

Seed-time was coming on; when the young leaves of the lime-tree began
to show as tender brown buds on the twigs, then the corn must be sown
for the summer's harvest. But before that the fields, which had lain
fallow through the winter, must be ploughed and harrowed.

Franz Vogt yoked the two dun cows, the strawberry remaining in her
stall. Wintry weather persisted obstinately this year. As he followed
the plough the hail lashed in his face, and the icy wind penetrated to
the skin through his jacket and warm knitted vest. He turned his back
to the storm in order to get breath, and hid his face behind a
sheltering arm. More than once he broke off work half-way, and took
back his team to their warm stable.

He would then spare no trouble with the beasts, and the two cows would
soon be standing contentedly with their feet in the plentiful straw.
But he himself would crouch before the cold hearth, trying to blow up
the smouldering turf into a bright flame. He would throw his damp
frieze coat over the back of a chair, and wait shivering for the fire
to burn up and warm him. Sometimes he would dally with the thought that
it might be best for him to sell up the whole place--house, stock, and
field, and go into the town. Was he not living the life of a beast of
burden? Worse, indeed! He had not had a single day of rest since his
release: not one, among all these days of labour on which he had toiled
till his bones ached. Wolf had told him how easily any poor devil could
get on in town if he only had a fairly level head, how free and
independent one could be there; how much more, then, a man with a few
thousand thalers in his pocket!

It so happened that at this moment the lord of the manor made a rather
advantageous offer for the land. He wanted it to "round off" his
estate.