s, smelled at the violets on the window-shelf, and
sat down on the kindling-wood that lay under the shed. The house seemed
to have become the property of the whole village. When joy or sorrow
enters a home, all doors are open, and the rooms and passages become as
a public highway.

"What do they all want?" inquired Hansei of Wastl, who had sat down
beside him on the bench.

"Nothing! All they've come for is to see for themselves that the whole
thing's true, so they can tell others about it. But they're all pleased
with your good luck."

"My good luck! Well, I suppose it had to be," said Hansei, in a tone
scarcely suggestive of happiness. "Wastl, it seems as if nothing is to
go right with me. I'd just begun to think that everything would go on
smoothly as it had been doing, and now, all at once, I've got to climb
another mountain. But you're single and, of course, you can't know how
I feel."

"It's very good of you to be so fond of your wife."

"My wife? So fond?"

"I know how you must feel."

Hansei shook his head with an incredulous air.

"Cheer up!" said Wastl. "Many a husband would be glad to be rid of his
wife for a year."

"For a year."

"The longer the better, some would say," thought Wastl. "But your wife
will come back again and turn your cottage into a palace, and then
you'll be king number two!"

Hansei laughed loudly, although he was not in a laughing mood. He felt
as if he must go out into the forest, where he should neither hear nor
see anything of the world. Confound it all! Why did the wife leave? Was
it for this that we married and pledged ourselves to be one for life,
come weal come woe?

But Hansei could not get away. Half the village had gathered about him.
All spoke of his good-fortune. The owner of the great farm up the road,
he who was known as the Leithof bauer, even stopped his team at the
garden gate and alighted in order to shake hands with Hansei and wish
him joy.

"If you'd like to buy the meadow next to your garden, I'll sell it to
you. It's a little too far off for me," said the Leithof bauer. The
joiner who lived in the village, and who had long been anxious to
emigrate, quickly said:

"You'll do far better if you buy my house and farm. I'll let you have
them dirt cheap."

The starlings up in the tree could not out-chatter these people. Hansei
laughed heartily. Why, this is splendid! thought he. The whole world
comes to offer me house and farm, field and meadow.

"Y