Oswald, to whom farming was as new as the life in the country itself, frequently went to the farm-yard, in order to be shown by the steward over the barns and stables, and to be introduced by him into the mysteries of agriculture and cattle-raising. The steward, whose name was Wrampe, was a giant who always went about in huge top-boots, and who seemed to cherish the superstitious belief that he would lose his strength if he were to trim his immense black beard, or ever deprive the rain of its exclusive privilege to wash his face. The broad jargon of that region was his native and his only tongue; he hated the pure German of the educated classes, and in his heart suspected all who spoke it of being dishonest; his voice sounded, when heard from afar, like the roaring of a slightly hoarse lion. His enemies accused him of the bad habit of getting drunk every now and then; but as he did so only once a month, and then always for several days at once, in order to show all the more energy during the rest of the time, his friends winked at it, and even his employer preferred to ignore his little foible. Oswald liked to talk with the man, who was a fair representative of the people of that region in his blunt good-nature, his straightforward though often rude speech, and his fondness for proverbs. Thus he had one afternoon taken a walk towards the farm-yard with the two boys. They found it deserted. The men and the horses were all in the fields. In the stables nothing was left but the baron's four bays, who played a melancholy quartette on the iron chains of their halters. The silent coachman was sitting at the door, gazing at the blue sky, as he had nothing on earth to do when the horses had been fed. A big black cat was wandering slowly around his feet; it was his _spiritus familiaris_, which accompanied him everywhere, and even on the box sat between his feet under the apron. In the cow-stables they found but a single cow, who was trying to shape her new-born calf, by industrious licking, into that form which may appear most desirable to a respectable cow-mother of certain pretensions. On the dungheap the chickens were scratching industriously, utterly unmindful of a battle royal between two young roosters, who had fallen out with each other about a little beetle, that lay on its back quietly awaiting its fate. An old cock, who might possibly have been the father of the two hostile brethren, was perched on the pole of a wagon, and crowed again and again, either from joy at the chivalrous nature of his offspring, or in order to report a cloud which was coming up above the roof of the barn. At one end of the roof sat a stork on her nest. The husband was just coming home, bringing the trophy of his hunt, a small snake, in his bill. The wife rattled her bill to give voice to her delight, and the stork, proud of having done his duty, was not slow to answer. From the little pond near the big stable a lot of ducks had begun their single