file march across the yard, under the command of a majestic drake; they had evidently received an authentic report that behind the barn a sack of corn had burst, and the grains were lying about. Oswald had been looking with much pleasure at this still-life picture of a farm-yard during a warm summer afternoon, while Bruno had tried to engage the reticent coachman into a conversation on the only two topics on which he could hope for success--his horses and his cat. Malte was tired, as there were few things anywhere in which he could take much interest, and ducks and chickens surely were not among them, at least as long as they were wandering about in the light of the sun. He asked, therefore, that they should go on; and so they passed through the yard, and a little cluster of miserable huts, into the open field. At some distance before them, on the road lined with willow trees, a servant seemed to have upset his wagon. The horses were standing across the road, and he was pulling at them, and cursing fearfully, as people of his class are apt to do under such circumstances. At last he seemed to have lost the little patience which nature had given and which liquor had left him. He seized the bridle of one of the horses and kicked it unmercifully with his heavy feet, encased as they were in immense boots. Oswald hardly noticed all this, till Bruno flew at the man like an arrow, crying out: "What a barbarian! what a brute!" In an instant he was by his side, and ordered the man to stop his ill-treatment; his voice trembled, but more from indignation than from the effort of running. "I know what I am doing!" replied the servant, and kicked the horse, which had become entangled in the traces, harder than ever. "Let the horse go this instant, or----" "Oh!" replied the servant, "or what?" "Or I stab you with this knife." The man started back and gazed at Bruno with amazement. It was not the fear of the knife which the boy held in his uplifted right hand--for the servant was a large, powerful man, who might have felled the boy with a single blow, and was, moreover, half drunk--but it was the fear of the demon that showed himself in Bruno's flashing eye, the fear of the terrible passion which made the boy's blood flow back from his cheeks to his heart, and caused his nostrils to tremble and his lips to quiver. "The beast is so savage," stammered the man, as if to excuse himself. But Bruno did not deign to answer. With quick hands, and as cleverly as if he had managed horses all his life, he undid the traces in which the animal had become entangled. Oswald tried to help him, but his efforts were more distinguished by good-will than by great success. Then the boy ran to the ditch, filled his straw-hat with water, and washed the wounds on the ill-treated legs of the horse.