"Forest-farmer, you shall not sell a field, nor a head of cattle from your stable; you shall have a coffin of good white ash-wood: God grant that you may not need it for a long time to come! You shall have good days yet in this world. You shall not sell the old fir-trees, but you shall sell the larch in your wood that are fit for felling. Have you your pocket-book on you? If so, just open it." I got a fright, when I saw the figure on the bank-note which the tempter had now drawn from his leather case and which, holding it between his finger-tips, he sent fluttering to and fro, like a little flag, before my father's blinking eyes. Misfortune had cleared the way in our house for the timber-merchant: we were no longer able to get all we wanted for our ten heads and stomachs out of that eighty yoke of mountain land; the doctor was sending us letters which I could not read soft and low enough to make them bearable to my father: "The forest-farmer is hereby summoned within fourteen days to ... failing which...." "As my patience is at last exhausted, I have placed the matter in the hands of the imperial and royal courts, and if, within eight days ... execution and distraint...." Those were more or less the first sentences which I was given to read in our dear High-German language. And there was a certain book, too, with its "date of debt" and "date of payment," which gave me an idea of the force that lies concealed in the language of Schiller and Goethe. It was a real live "hundred" which the timber-merchant held by the corner between his two fingers. Did not a chill shudder, at that moment, go over the tops of the larches that were dotted here and there in the pine-woods outside, I wonder? Nor any anxious foreboding trouble the hearts of the little birds that had built their nests there? My father did not put out his hand for the money, but neither did he hide it in his pocket; he did not busy it with the lever of the oil-press; he just kept it, half-open, as nature had bent it, on his knee, while he sat exhausted with his labour. Clements dropped the rare bit of paper into it; then the lank fingers closed softly--instinctively--and held it tight. The larch were sold. "I have only one condition to make," said the timber-merchant, when he saw that the poor small farmer lay duly under the spell of the money. "I shall have the trees felled late in the autumn, when the snow comes. You will be astonished, forest-farmer, when I tell you that the emperor will ride over your larch-trees! Yes, yes, we shall use them for building the railway. My condition is that my wood-cutters shall be allowed to cook their meals and sleep in your house as long as they are working in the woods." "Why not?" said father. "That'll be all right, if it's good enough for them under my roof." What mischief those good-natured words brought down upon our peaceful forest home!