"The stout farmer laughed, and said to my brother: 'The boy is no fool. I like him, and we can arrange the terms together.' "Lorenz and the farmer came to an agreement, and the only speech my brother made me at parting was, 'If you come home before the winter you shall be well flogged.' "I was a goatherd for a whole summer. It was a pleasant enough life, and I was constantly singing; but often the words rang in my ears 'What is the price of the lad?' and I felt as if I had been sold like Joseph in Egypt. Like him, my brother sold me, but I never became a great man. "I returned home when winter came. I was not well used at home, but then I did not deserve to be so. In the spring I said to my father, 'Give me a hundred gulden's worth of clocks, and I will take them about the country to sell.' 'You are more likely to get a hundred boxes on the ear,' said my brother Lorenz, on hearing this. "At that time the whole business had devolved on him, and the household also. Our father was in bad health, and our mother did not venture to interfere. In those days women were not so much thought of as now, and I think on that very account they were better off, and their husbands too. I then contrived to persuade a pedlar to take me with him, to carry his clocks. I was almost bent double with fatigue, and often suffered miserably from hunger, and yet never could escape from my tyrant. I was as much under the yoke as any carthorse, but the latter is not allowed to starve, because its value would be gone. I sometimes thought of robbing my master, and running away, but then again, as a penance for my wicked thoughts, I would determine to stay with my tormentor.