At this moment his father came rushing out of the house in great excitement; he had a slipper on one foot, a boot on the other, and his necktie had turned to the back of his neck. “They are coming! they are coming!” he cried, clapping his hands; then he caught his wife round the waist and danced with her into the middle of the road. She looked at him with great anxious eyes, as if she wanted to say, “What fresh nonsense have you contrived now?” But he would not let her go, and when the twins in their pink cotton frocks and dark little pigtails came running out of the garden, he made for them, took them in his arms, let them dance on his shoulders, and pretended to throw them over the ditch, so that the mother could only stop this nonsense by most ardent pleading. “There, you little rogues,” he cried, “rejoice and dance. All poverty is ended now; next spring we shall measure our money by the bushel.” The mother looked at him askance, but said nothing. The monster came nearer and nearer. Paul stood there motionless--all eyes. Then he looked up at his mother, whose face was care-worn, and a certain fear came over him as if now the devil had come into the house; but then he remembered how his wish of a moment ago was fulfilled, and he resolved to meet the black guest with full confidence. Meanwhile all the farm-servants and maids came hurrying from the stables and kitchen. All the inmates of the Howdahs stood in a row by the fence and gazed at the approaching wonder. “But tell me, what do you want to do with it?” Frau Elsbeth at last asked her husband. He threw a pitying glance at her; then he laughed shortly, and said, “Drive about in it.” Frau Elsbeth asked no more. Her husband, turning to the upper farm-servant, expounded his plans: how he would begin peat-cutting on a large scale; cutting and pressing machines were also on the way, and to-morrow, early, work could begin. Then he gave him orders to go to the village to engage the necessary workmen. Ten men would suffice for the beginning, but he hoped soon to need as many as twenty or thirty. Frau Elsbeth mutely shook her head, and went into the house just as the locomobile arrived before the gate. Paul never tired of looking and admiring. Behind the yellow screws and crooked handles there seemed to lie a world of mystery; the place for the fire, with the grate and ash-box beneath, seemed to him like the entrance to that fiery furnace, in which the well-known three holy men had once intoned their song of praise; and the chimney above all, standing threateningly upright, with its wreath of pine soot at its mouth, which seemed to lead down into blackness and fathomless depths!