y; and now
they would have me bring more plagues upon me than Moses brought upon
Egypt. Nay, nay!" thought Hans; "you'll not catch me there, neither."

Hans all this time was seated upon his shop-board, stitching, at an
amazing rate, upon a garment which the rascally Wagner should have
finished to order at six o'clock that morning, instead of decamping with
his money; and, ever and anon, so far forgetting his loss in what
appeared to him the ludicrousness of this advice, as freely to laugh
out. All that day, the idea continued to run in his head; the next, it
had lost much of its freshness; the third, it appeared not so odd as
awful; the fourth, he began to ask himself whether it might be quite so
momentous as his imagination had painted it; the fifth, he really
thought it was not so bad neither; the sixth, it had so worked round in
his head, that it had fairly got on the other side, and appeared clearly
to have its advantages--children did not come scampering into the world
all at once, like a flock of lambs into a meadow--a wife might help to
gather, as well as spend--might possibly bring something of her own--ay!
a new idea!--would be a perpetual watch and storekeeper in his
absence--might speak a word of comfort, in trouble when even his fiddle
was dumb; on the seventh--he was off! Whither?

Why, it so happened that in his "wander-years," Hans had played his
fiddle at many a dance--a very dangerous position; for his chin resting
on "the merry bit of wood," as the ancient Friend termed that
instrument, and his head leaned on one side, he had had plenty of
opportunity to watch the movements of plenty of fair maids in the dance,
as well as occasionally to whirl them round in the everlasting waltz
himself. Accordingly, Hans had left his heart many times, for a week or
ten days or so, behind him, in many a town and dorf of Bohemia and
Germany; but it always came after him and overtook him again, except on
one occasion. Among the damsels of the Boehmer-Wald who had danced to the
sound of his fiddle, there was a certain substantial bergman's or
master-miner's daughter, who, having got into his head in some odd
association with his fiddle, was continually coming up as he played his
old airs, and could not be got out again, especially as he fancied that
the comely and simple-hearted creature had a lurking fondness for both
his music and himself.

Away he went: and he was right. The damsel made no objection to his
overture