glass.

"ACH, DAS MISTBEET!" gasped Paulina, hearing her hotbed shivered. "The
poor soul, Fritz, he will cut himself. ACH! what is that?" They both sat
up in bed. "WIEDER! ACH, What is he doing?"

The noise came steadily, a sound of chopping. Paulina tore off her
night-cap. "DIE BAUME, DIE BAUME! He is cutting our trees, Fritz!" Before
her husband could prevent her, she had sprung from the bed and rushed to
the window. "DER TAUBENSCHLAG! GERECHTER HIMMEL, he is chopping the
dove-house down!"

Fritz reached her side before she had got her breath again, and poked
his head out beside hers. There, in the faint starlight, they saw a
bulky man, barefoot, half dressed, chopping away at the white post that
formed the pedestal of the dove-house. The startled pigeons were
croaking and flying about his head, even beating their wings in his
face, so that he struck at them furiously with the axe. In a few seconds
there was a crash, and Wunsch had actually felled the dove-house.

"Oh, if only it is not the trees next!" prayed Paulina. "The dove-house
you can make new again, but not DIE BAUME."

They watched breathlessly. In the garden below Wunsch stood in the
attitude of a woodman, contemplating the fallen cote. Suddenly he threw
the axe over his shoulder and went out of the front gate toward the
town.

"The poor soul, he will meet his death!" Mrs. Kohler wailed. She ran
back to her feather bed and hid her face in the pillow.

Fritz kept watch at the window. "No, no, Paulina," he called presently;
"I see lanterns coming. Johnny must have gone for somebody. Yes, four
lanterns, coming along the gulch. They stop; they must have seen him
already. Now they are under the hill and I cannot see them, but I think
they have him. They will bring him back. I must dress and go down." He
caught his trousers and began pulling them on by the window. "Yes, here
they come, half a dozen men. And they have tied him with a rope,
Paulina!"

"ACH, the poor man! To be led like a cow," groaned Mrs. Kohler. "Oh, it
is good that he has no wife!" She was reproaching herself for nagging
Fritz when he drank himself into foolish pleasantry or mild sulks, and
felt that she had never before appreciated her blessings.

Wunsch was in bed for ten days, during which time he was gossiped about
and even preached about in Moonstone. The Baptist preacher took a shot
at the fallen man from his pulpit, Mrs. Livery Johnson nodding
approvingly from her pew. The mo