Therefore, "what keeps thee, Hans?" sang an echo song beneath the boy's whistling, and made him feel that his errand was blest. VII HANS HAS HIS WAY Broek, with its quiet, spotless streets, its frozen rivulets, its yellow brick pavements, and bright wooden houses, was near by. It was a village where neatness and show were in full blossom; but the inhabitants seemed to be either asleep or dead. Not a footprint marred the sanded paths, where pebbles and sea-shells lay in fanciful designs. Every window-shutter was closed as tightly as though air and sunshine were poison; and the massive front doors were never opened except on the occasion of a wedding, christening, or a funeral. Serene clouds of tobacco-smoke were floating through hidden apartments, and children, who otherwise might have awakened the place, were studying in out-of-the-way corners, or skating upon the neighboring canal. A few peacocks and wolves stood in the gardens, but they had never enjoyed the luxury of flesh and blood. They were cut out in growing box, and seemed guarding the grounds with a sort of green ferocity. Certain lively automata, ducks, women and sportsmen, were stowed away in summer-houses, waiting for the spring-time, when they could be wound up, and rival their owners in animation; and the shining, tiled roofs, mosaic courtyards and polished house-trimmings flashed up a silent homage to the sky, where never a speck of dust could dwell. Hans glanced toward the village, as he shook his silver kwartjes, and wondered whether it were really true, as he had often heard, that some of the people of Broek were so rich that they used kitchen utensils of solid gold. He had seen Mevrouw van Stoop's sweet-cheeses in market, and he knew that the lofty dame earned many a bright, silver guilder in selling them. But did she set the cream to rise in golden pans? Did she use a golden skimmer? When her cows were in winter quarters, were their tails really tied up with ribbons? These thoughts ran through his mind as he turned his face toward Amsterdam, not five miles away, on the other side of the frozen Y.[14] The ice upon the canal was perfect; but his wooden runners, so soon to be cast aside, squeaked a dismal farewell, as he scraped and skimmed along. [Footnote 14: Pronounced Eye, an arm of the Zuider Zee.] When crossing the Y, whom should he see skating toward him but the great Dr. Boekman, the most famous physician and surgeon in Holland. Hans had never met him before, but he had seen his engraved likeness in many of the shop-windows of Amsterdam. It was a face that one could never forget. Thin and lank, though a born Dutchman, with stern, blue eyes, and queer, compressed lips, that seemed to say "no smiling permitted," he certainly was not a very jolly or sociable looking personage, nor one that a well-trained boy would care to accost unbidden. But Hans _was_ bidden, and that, too, by a voice he seldom disregarded--his own conscience.