warm chimney.

The forge stood open, but spite of knocking and shouting, neither the
master of the place, nor any other living soul appeared. Adam had gone
out, but could not be far away, for the door leading from the shop into
the sitting-room, was also unlocked.

The time was growing long to Father Benedict, so for occupation he tried
to lift the heavy hammer. It was a difficult task, though he was no
weakling, yet it was not hard for Adam's arm to swing and guide the
burden. If only the man had understood how to govern his life as well as
he managed his ponderous tool!

He did not belong to Richtberg. What would his father have said, had he
lived to see his son dwell here?

The monk had known the old smith well, and he also knew many things
about the son and his destiny, yet no more than rumor entrusts to one
person concerning another's life. Even this was enough to explain why
Adam had become so reserved, misanthropic and silent a man, though even
in his youth he certainly had not been what is termed a gay fellow.

The forge where he grew up, was still standing in the market-place
of the little city below; it had belonged to his grandfather and
great-grandfather. There had never been any lack of custom, to the
annoyance of the wise magistrates, whose discussions were disturbed by
the hammering that rang across the ill-paved square to the windows
of the council-chamber; but, on the other hand, the idle hours of the
watchmen under the arches of the ground-floor of the town-hall were
sweetened by the bustle before the smithy.

How Adam had come from the market-place to the Richtberg, is a story
speedily told.

He was the only child of his dead parents, and early learned his
father's trade. When his mother died, the old man gave his son and
partner his blessing, and some florins to pay his expenses, and sent him
away. He went directly to Nuremberg, which the old man praised as the
high-school of the smith's art, and there remained twelve years. When,
at the end of that time, news came to Adam that his father was dead, and
he had inherited the forge on the market-place, he wondered to find that
he was thirty years old, and had gone no farther than Nuremberg. True,
everything that the rest of the world could do in the art of forging
might be learned there.

He was a large, heavy man, and from childhood had moved slowly and
reluctantly from the place where he chanced to be.

If work was pressing, he could not be