"One Tuesday he was going to Berne with an enormous cartful of his prettiest brooms, all gathered from his favourite trees, that is to say, Rosie, Little Mary-Anne, and company. He was pulling with all his strength, and greatly astonished to find that his cart didn't go of itself, as it did at first; that it really pulled too hard, and that something must be wrong with it. At every moment he was obliged to stop to take breath and wipe his forehead. 'If only I was at the top of the hill of Stalden!' said he. He had stopped thus in the little wood of Muri, close to the bench that the women rest their baskets on. Upon the bench sat a young girl, holding a little bundle beside her, and weeping hot tears. Hansli, who had a kind heart, asked her what she was crying for. "The young girl recounted to him that she was obliged to go into the town, and that she was so frightened she scarcely dared; that her father was a shoemaker, and that all his best customers were in the town; that for a long time she had carried her bundle of shoes in, on market days, and that nothing had ever happened to her. But behold, there had arrived in the town a new gendarme, very cross, who had already tormented her every Tuesday she had come, for some time back; and threatened her, if she came again, to take her shoes from her, and put her in prison. She had begged her father not to send her any more, but her father was as severe as a Prussian soldier, and had ordered her to 'go in, always; and if anybody hurt her, it was with him they would have affairs;' but what would that help her?--she was just as much afraid of the gendarme as before. "Hansli felt himself touched with compassion; above all, on account of the confidence the young girl had had in telling him all this; that which certainly she would not have done to everybody. 'But she has seen at once that I am not a bad fellow, and that I have a kind heart,' thought he. "Poor Hansli!--but after all, it is faith which saves, people say."