"'So,' said he, 'they are still alive? And I had always dreamt that they were all dead, all! God, what tales the young people tell!' And then he laughed again." "Ah--mad then!" "It must have been so," said my companion. "For a while after that he tried to earn his bread as a farm-servant, but later on, as he couldn't succeed in that, he came on the parish. As a rule, one saw nothing amiss with him, but many a time one did--many a time one did." "You knew him quite well?" I asked the young fellow. "Well, naturally," was his answer; "he was my grandfather." XII How I Came to the Plough This is one of the very shortest, but also one of the most important chapters in my story. It takes me out of my first childish youth and my herding time, and brings me to the days of my young manhood and of work filled with conscious purpose. It needed many an artful trick before I managed to get promoted from cowherd to ploughman. I had to sprain my foot, so that I could not run after the cattle properly; I had to find birds' nests in the meadow, which inclined my younger brother to take over my herdsman's duties in my stead; lastly, I had to coax Markus the farm-hand, who had driven the plough till then, into declaring that it was an easy-going implement, as simple to handle as a pocket-knife, and that I--the callow lad--was fairly strong enough and fit to guide the plough. And I stood there and drew myself up until I reached at least as high as long Markus's shoulders, and I shook one of the fence-posts until it groaned--as a proof of my fitness for the plough. But my father laughed and said: "Get out, you're a little swaggerer! What you need is a good breeches-dusting given you every day. And now he's pretending to be grown up. Very well, take hold; it won't last long!" We were in the fields when he spoke. Markus stood back; and I took the plough by the horns.