is the use of putting oneself in the way of blows, when one can get things somewhere else without danger? Aussi, the Rychiswyl farmers were enchanted with their courageous little garde-champêtre, and if one or the other saw him with his hair pulled, they failed not to say, 'Never mind, Hansli; he will have had his dance all the same. Tell me the next time you see anything--I'll go with you, and we'll cure him of his taste for brooms.' Whereupon, Hansli would tell him when he saw anybody about that should not be; the peasant [91] kept himself hid; Hansli began the attack; the adversary, thinking himself strongest, waited for him; once the thief seized, the peasant showed himself, and all was said. Then the marauder would have got away if he could, but Hansli never let go till he had been beaten as was fitting. "This was a very efficacious remedy against the switch-stealers, and Little Mary-Anne and Rosie remained in perfect security in the midst of the loneliest fields. Thus Hansli passed some years without perceiving it, and without imagining that things could ever change. A week passed, as the hand went round the clock, he didn't know how. Tuesday, market-day at Berne, was there before he could think about it; and Tuesday was no sooner past than Saturday was there; and he had to go to Thun, whether he would or no, for how could the Thun people get on without him? Between times he had enough to do to prepare his cartload, and to content his customers,--that is to say, those of them that pleased him. Our Hansli was a man; and every man, when his position permits it, has his caprices of liking and disliking. Whenever one had trod on his toes, one must have been very clever afterwards to get the least twig of a broom from him. The parson's wife, for instance, couldn't have got one if she would have paid for it twice over. It was no use sending to him; every time she did, he said he was very sorry, but he hadn't a broom left that would suit her. "That was because she had one day said to him that he was just like other people, and contented himself with putting a few long twigs all round, and then bad ones in the middle. "'Then you may as well get your brooms from somebody else,' said he; and held to it too;--so well that the lady died without ever having been able to get the shadow of a broom from him.