St. Andrew's Day was bright and fine, and not very windy. It was tolerably warm, and there wasn't as much snow in the furrows as would have cooled a nutshell of wine, or knocked over a humming-bird. On the previous Tuesday Siebenkæs had been looking on with the other spectators, when the bird-pole had described its majestic arc in descending to impale the black golden eagle with outstretched wings, and rise again therewith on high. He felt some emotion as the thought struck him, "That bird of prey up there holds in his claws, and will dispense, the happiness or the misery of thy Lenette's coming weeks, and our goddess of Fortune has transformed herself and dwindled into that black form, nothing left of her but her WINGS and BALL." On St. Andrew's morning, as he said good-bye to Lenette, with kisses, and in his abbreviated boots, over which he had a pair of goloshes, she said, "May God grant you luck, and not let you do any mischief with your rifle." She asked several times if there was nothing he had forgotten--his eyeglass, or his handkerchief, or his purse; "And mind you don't get into any quarrel with Mr. von Meyern," was her parting counsel: and finally, as one or two preliminary thundrous drum-ruffles were heard from the direction of the courthouse, she added most anxiously, "For God's sake, mind and don't shoot yourself; my blood will run cold the whole forenoon every time I hear a gun go off!" At length the long thread of riflemen, rolled up like a ball, began to unwind itself, and the waving line, like a great serpent, moved off in surging convolutions to the sound of trumpets and drums. A banner represented the serpent's crest, and the standard-bearer's coat was like a second flag beneath the other. The town-soldiery, more remarkable for quality than for quantity, shot the mottled line of competitors at intervals with the white of their uniforms. The auctioneering hairdresser--the only member of the lower ten thousand who rejoiced in a powdered head--tripped along, keeping the white peak of his cap at the due degree of distance from the leather pigtails of the aristocracy, which he had that morning tied and powdered. The multitude felt what a lofty position in this world really was, when, with bent heads, they raised their eyes to Heimlicher von Blaise, the director of the competition, who accompanied the procession in his capacity of aorta of the whole arterial system, or elementary fire of all these ignes-fatui--or, in a word, as master of the shooters' lodge. Happy was the wife who peeped out and saw her husband marching past in the procession--happy was Lenette, for her husband was there, and looked gallantly up as he passed by. His short boots looked very nice, indeed; they were made both in the old fashion and in the new, and, like man, had put on the new (short) Adam over the old one.