village, which lies only six leagues from
hence. One may pass over the mountain in three hours, and I have never
before spent a year in the neglect of edifying things."

"There is no church festival then now a-days?" enquired Dubois. "Well
no wonder; nay, even the great annual markets have been abolished."

"The turkish great sultan and the heathenish Marrelburgh must have
negociated an alliance with the rebels, that we completely fall into
miserere, for one cannot know what the political conjunctive may
produce to us in this year: All indicatives, said our pastor only
yesterday, promise no particular property, and we may indeed be stuck
fast in the mud by the new year."

"Pray, spare us Gossip," said Dubois smiling, "the learned words, in
which indeed you have ever contrary wind, and you do not rightly
understand the tacking about (Laviren)."

"By, expressing myself thus," rejoined Barbara impatiently, "do I then
in any way squander your capital interest? I merely add thereto my own,
and whenever I may require mesicaments, there stands my old man, and
you need not offer me any strange Laxirung.

"Such phrases and notions are indeed not at all proper. What must my
honoured cousin think? he certainly imagines we live quite freely with
each other as if we had been married together. It remains a constant
truth, that whoever has been once a virtoso, can never again become a
simple-minded man, he is for ever lost to pomology, kindheartedness, or
hormanity."

"Do not become warm about it gossip," said the musician, "I have never
dreamed of offending you."

"No more," said she angrily, "to me of dreams and dreampeter stories;
for they are just as unsufferable to me as your sonneteering on my
table there. It too has not once dreamed, that in its old age it would
serve as a finger board.--

"Peace," said Godfred, "you do not understand all that, Barbara, for
the people over there are assembling: What is the matter then. Let our
gossip play the harpsichord, he uses his own fingers for it and not
yours, but something new must have occurred, I should like to hear, we
must question our neighbours."

Thus throwing unconsciously the different conversations together,
because he was curious, and yet he also wished to answer, he now
demanded of one that was running by, why the neighbourhood seemed thus
in an uproar. Now smart firing was heard close by. "There must be great
confusion on all sides in the valley," said a country