ty idea. To be sure it
does not work all the year round; during planting and harvest-time all
thinking ceases. But it isn't necessary then anyway, because they have
no time for wickedness."

"You have, then, regular sections in your teaching?" asked the Hunter.

"In winter," replied the Justice, "the mottoes usually begin after
threshing and last until sowing. In summer, on the other hand, they are
assigned from Walpurgis Night until dog days. Those are the times when
peasants have the least to do."

With that he left the young man, who got up and looked around in the
house, the yard, the orchard, and the meadow. He spent several hours in
this inspection, since everything he saw attracted him. The rural
stillness, the green of the meadows, the prosperity which beamed upon
him from the whole estate, all made a most pleasant impression, and
aroused in him a desire to spend the one or two weeks that might elapse
before he received news from old Jochem there in the open country rather
than in the narrow alleys of a small city. Inasmuch as he wore his heart
on his tongue, he went forthwith to the Justice, who was in the oak
grove marking a pair of trees for felling, and expressed his wish. In
return he offered to assist in anything that might be of use to his
host.

Beauty is an excellent dowry. It is a key which, like that little one of
gold, opens by magic seven locks, each one different from the rest. The
old man gazed for a moment at the youth's slim yet robust figure and at
his honest and at the same time splendidly aristocratic face, and at
first shook his head persistently; then, however, he nodded approvingly,
and, finally growing friendly, granted him his request. He assigned to
the Hunter a corner room on the upper floor of the house, from one side
of which one could see across the oak grove toward the hills and
mountains, and from the other out over the meadows and corn fields. The
guest had, to be sure, in place of paying for his room and board, to
promise to fulfil a very peculiar condition. For the Justice did not
like to have even beauty favored without an equivalent return.

CHAPTER V

THE HUNTER HIRES OUT AS POACHER

He asked the young man, before he promised him quarters, whether he was
a lover of hunting, as his green suit, gun and hunting-bag seemed to
indicate. The latter replied that, as far back as he could remember, he
had always had a passion amounting to real madness for deer-shooting; i