Nothing could well be less like the manners and habits I was used to than the coarse familiarity and easy impertinence of these young fellows. They questioned me about my birth, my education, my means, what circumstance had driven me to my present step, and why none of my friends had done anything to save me from it Not content with a number of very searching inquiries, they began to assure me that Herr Ignaz would not put up with my incapacity for a week. “He 'll send you into the yard,” cried one; and the sentence was chorused at once. “Ja! ja! he'll be sent into the yard.” And though I was dying to know what that might mean, my pride restrained my curiosity, and I would not condescend to ask. “Won't he be fine in the yard!” I heard one whisper to another, and they both began laughing at the conceit; and I now sat down on a bench and lost myself in thought. “Come; we are going to dinner, Englander,” said Harasch to me at last; and I arose and followed him. CHAPTER XVII. HANSERL OF THE YARD I was soon to learn what being “sent into the yard” meant. Within a week that destiny was mine. Being so sent was the phrase for being charged to count the staves as they arrived in wagon-loads from Hungary,--oaken staves being the chief “industry” of Fiume, and the principal source of Herr Oppovich's fortune. My companion, and, indeed, my instructor in this intellectual employment, was a strange-looking, dwarfish creature, who, whatever the season, wore a suit of dark yellow leather, the jerkin being fastened round the waist by a broad belt with a heavy brass buckle. He had been in the yard three-and-forty years, and though his assistants had been uniformly promoted to the office, he had met no advancement in life, but was still in the same walk and the same grade in which he had started. Hans Sponer was, however, a philosopher, and went on his road uncomplainingly. He said that the open air and the freedom were better than the closeness and confinement within-doors, and if his pay was smaller, his healthier appetite made him able to relish plainer food; and this mode of reconciling things--striking the balance between good and ill--went through all he said or did, and his favorite phrase, “Es ist fast einerley,” or “It comes to about the same,” comprised his whole system of worldly knowledge.