. For some years past, however,
Hans was often subject to fits of dejection, for the authorities had
decreed that there should be no more dancing without the special
permission of the magistrate. Trumpets and other wind-instruments
supplanted the fiddle, and our friend Hans could no longer play his
merry jigs, except to the children under the old oak-tree, until his
reverence, in the exercise of his clerical powers, forbade even this
amusement, as prejudicial to sound school discipline.

Hans lost his wife just three years ago, with whom he had lived in
uninterrupted harmony. Brightly and joyously as he had looked on life at
the outset of his career, its close seemed often clouded, sad, and
burthensome, more than he was himself aware. "A man ought not to grow so
old!" he often repeated--an expression which escaped from a long train
of thought that was passing unconsciously in the old man's mind, in
which he acknowledged to himself that young limbs and the vigor of
youth properly belonged to the careless life of a wandering musician.
"The hay does not grow as sweet as it did thirty years ago!" he stoutly
maintained.

The new village magistrate, who had a peculiarly kind feeling towards
old Hans, set about devising means of securing him from want for the
rest of his days. The sum (no inconsiderable one) for which the house
was insured in the fire-office was by law not payable in full until
another house should be built in its place. It happened that the parish
had for a long time been looking out for a spot on which to erect a new
schoolhouse in the village, and at the suggestion of the worthy
magistrate the authorities now bought from Hans the ground on which his
cottage had stood, with all that remained upon it. But the old man did
not wish to be paid any sum down, and an annuity was settled on him
instead, amply sufficient to provide for all his wants. This plan quite
took his fancy; he chuckled at the thought (as he expressed it) that he
was eating himself up, and draining the glass to the last drop.

Hans, moreover, was now permitted again to play to the children under
the village oak on a summer evening. Thus he lived quite a new life; and
his former spirit seemed in some measure to return. In the summer, when
the building of the new schoolhouse was commenced, old Hans was riveted
to the spot as if by magic; there he sat upon the timbers, or on a pile
of stones, watching the digging and hammering with fixed attent