The worthy Haespele ran quickly down the village, to a stocking weaver's who was seated in his room, practising some new tunes on the French horn. It sounded very pretty through the stillness of the night, when a man's own footsteps were inaudible in the thick snow. It was very natural that Joseph should prefer being with the old horn player, to sitting at home; but he was not there either. On his way, Haespele mentioned to his neighbours that he was in search of Joseph; no one had seen him, and nowhere was he to be found! Haespele returned to David with this distressing intelligence, and the latter said, "Keep quiet, and not a word before the women, or there will be a fine howling; stay here for a little, he has very probably hid himself, and perhaps intends to come here with the Three Holy Kings--I mean the masks, who go about on this evening--I daresay he thinks it would be fine fun; but I'll show him another sort of fun when I catch him." David sat down again, and with apparent composure, whistled, and kept waving his hand in the air, as if in anticipation of the strokes of the birch rod he fully intended to administer to the little culprit. "I will stay quietly where I am," said he, as if addressing himself; so he filled his pipe and went on smoking, muttering occasionally, what a good-for-nothing little scamp Joseph was, but he would take care he should be well punished for all the anxiety he had caused. David took up his Bible, and continued to read on from the place where he had stopped the day before; it was in the 2nd book of Samuel, 12th chapter, where King David mourns for his sick child. This did not contribute to tranquillize the reader, so he got up and went out and in, listening anxiously. The bells were all merrily ringing in the Festival--surely he must come soon now--but no one came. There was no longer a possibility of secresy; David went to every house in the village to the right, and Haespele the same to the left. They both met again at David's house. The procession of the Three Holy Kings passed along; Joseph was not with them; concealment was now out of the question. "Martina, our Joseph has disappeared," said the grandfather, and Martina uttered a loud cry of grief, exclaiming:-- "This was why he woke me three times last night and asked; 'Mother, is it not yet light?' Joseph! Joseph! Joseph! where are you?" shouted she through the whole house, up the hill, and all along the village, in the garden, and among the fields. "Oh! if he is lost, I shall die," said David; "I shall never hear the New Year rung in, and the tree I bought to make clock cases of, may be sawed up for my coffin, and I laid in it."