When the master of the house saw that these three queer customers would put up with anything, if only they were allowed to remain in his service, he first lowered their wages, and next gave them scanter fare. But this only led to an aggravation of diligence on their part, and that again enabled him to flood the whole surrounding district with his goods, and he got orders upon orders, so that he made a pile of money out of their cheap labor and possessed a veritable gold mine in them. He let out his leather belt around the loins by several holes and began to play quite an important part in the town, while all this time his foolish workmen slaved like beasts of burden in their dark and ill-ventilated shop at home, striving, each of them, to force the other two out of the race. Dietrich, the Suabian, although the youngest of them, proved of the same calibre as the other two. The only difference was that he as yet had scarcely any savings, inasmuch as he had not yet traveled around much, having been a prentice until recently. This would have been an unfortunate obstacle for him in the race, for Jobst and Fridolin would have had greatly the start of him, if he as a Suabian had not been inventive in stratagem. For although Dietrich's heart, like that of the others, was wholly bare of any sinful or earthly passion, always excepting the one of persisting to remain in Seldwyla and nowhere else, and to reap all the advantages of that plan, he nevertheless bethought him of the trick of falling in love and to woo such a maiden as should possess about such a dowry in size as the respective treasures which the Saxon or the Bavarian had hidden under their tiles.