"Why," he smiled, "if you cannot agree among yourselves at all as to who is to remain and who to go, I will tell you how we will decide this matter. But that is absolutely the last proposal I shall make to you. To-morrow being Sunday, I shall pay your wages; you pack up your belongings, get ready to go forth and take your staffs. Then you will in all good faith and perfect harmony leave jointly, going out by whichever gate you may agree upon, and march on the highroad for another half-hour, no more, no less, and then stop. Then you will rest yourselves a trifle, and if you care to do so, you may even drink a shoppen or two. Having done so, you will all three of you turn once more and walk back to town, and whoever will then first ask me for work, him I will keep, but the other two must wander forth for good and all, wherever they might choose to go." Hearing this cruel decision, they three fell once more at his feet and begged him most pitifully to have mercy on them and to desist from his plan. But the master, who by this time began to anticipate some rare fun in his wicked soul, was obstinate and would not listen to them, hardening himself. Suddenly the Suabian sprang up and ran out of the house like a man demented, across the street to Zues Buenzlin. Scarcely had Jobst and the Bavarian observed that, when they ceased to lament themselves and followed the youngest. Within a very brief space the three of them were seated in the dwelling of the frightened maiden. Zues felt rather abashed and undecided by reason of the adventure taking such an unexpected turn. But she calmed herself, and viewing the matter from her own particular angle, she resolved to make her plans subservient to the master's odd conceit. In fact, she regarded this new aspect of affairs as a special dispensation of Providence. Touched and devout she fetched out one of her volumes, then with her needle at random pricked among the leaves, and when she opened the book at the spot, she found a passage that spoke of the persistent following of the righteous path. Next she made the three guests turn up passages blindfolded, and all that was found treated of walking along the narrow way, of advancing without looking backwards, in short, of nothing but running and racing. Thus, then, she decided, Heaven itself had prescribed the projected race for to-morrow. But since she was afraid that Dietrich, as being the youngest and the ablest in jumping, walking, and running, and thus most likely to win the palm if left without supervision, she made up her mind to go herself along with the three lovers, and to watch for an opportunity for bending or influencing possibly the outcome of this undertaking in accordance with her own secret desires. For she wished, as we must recall, one of the older men to be the victor, she did not care which of the two.