He went through the whole house, from cellar to garret. Then he went out into the stable, where, for a long while, he watched the cow feeding. "Such a beast has a good time of it, after all," thought he; "others have to provide for it, and wherever it finds a full crib, it is at home." He went into the room and, silently nodding to the grandmother, cast a hurried glance at the slumbering child. He seated himself near the table and, resting his elbows thereon, buried his face in his hands. "It still goes," said he, looking up at the Black Forest clock that was ticking on the wall. "She wound it up before she left." He went out and sat down on the bench under the cherry-tree. The starlings overhead were quite merry, and from the woods a cuckoo called: "Yes, he goes away, too, and leaves his children to be brought up by strangers." Hansei laughed to himself, and looked about him. Had the wife really gone? She must still be sitting there! How could those who belong together be thus parted? He kept staring at the seat next to him,--but she was not there. Half the village had gathered before the garden gate. Young and old, big and little, stood there, gazing at him. Wastl (Sebastian), the weaver, who had for many years been a comrade of Hansei's, and had worked with him in the forest, called out: "God greet you, Hansei! Your bread has fallen with the buttered side up." Hansei muttered sullen thanks. Suddenly, there was a great peal of laughter. No one knew who had been the first to utter the word "he-nurse." It had been rapidly and quietly passed from one to another through the crowd, until it at last reached Thomas, Zenza's son--a bold, rawboned fellow, whose open shirt revealed a brawny chest. "Walpurga's the crown prince's _she_-nurse, and Hansei's the _he_-nurse." Wastl opened the gate and entered the garden, the whole crowd following at his heels. They went through garden, house and stable; peeped through the windows, smelled at the violets on the window-shelf, and sat down on the kindling-wood that lay under the shed. The house seemed to have become the property of the whole village. When joy or sorrow enters a home, all doors are open, and the rooms and passages become as a public highway. "What do they all want?" inquired Hansei of Wastl, who had sat down beside him on the bench. "Nothing! All they've come for is to see for themselves that the whole thing's true, so they can tell others about it. But they're all pleased with your good luck." "My good luck! Well, I suppose it had to be," said Hansei, in a tone scarcely suggestive of happiness. "Wastl, it seems as if nothing is to go right with me. I'd just begun to think that everything would go on smoothly as it had been doing, and now, all at once, I've got to climb another mountain. But you're single and, of course, you can't know how I feel." "It's very good of you to be so fond of your wife." "My wife? So fond?" "I know how you must feel."