Johannes screamed lustily in the hour of his father's death, but not for his father. But Mrs. Christine cried much for her husband and for a long time could not be quieted either by Auntie Schlotterbeck's words of consolation or by the philosophic admonitions of the wise Master Nikolaus Grünebaum. The latter promised his dying brother-in-law to do his best for those who were left and to stand by them in all the crises of life according to his best ability. Once more Anton Unwirrsch struggled for air, but the air for him was too full of flames of fire; he sighed and died. The doctor wrote his death certificate; Mrs. Kiebike, the layer-out, came and washed him, his coffin was ready at the right time, a goodly train of neighbors and friends accompanied him to the churchyard, and in the corner, beside the stove, sat Mrs. Christine, who held her child on her lap and gazed with fixed, red and swollen eyes at the low black work-stool and the low black work-table and who still could not believe that her Anton would never again sit on the one and in front of the other. Auntie Schlotterbeck cleared away the empty cake plates, bottles and glasses which had been placed, full, before the mourners, the pall-bearers and the condoling neighbors to give them strength in their sorrow. Hans Jakob Nikolaus Unwirrsch crowed with childish joy and stretched out his tiny hands longingly toward the shining glass globe above his father's table, on which the sun now fell and which had shed such a remarkable lustre on Anton Unwirrsch's world of thought. The influence of this globe was long to continue. The mother had become so accustomed to its light that she could not dispense with it even after her husband's death; it shone on far into the son's youth, Johannes heard many a tale of his father's worth and excellence by its light, and gradually in the son's mind the image of his father was joined inseparably to the brilliance of this globe. CHAPTER II The ancients thought that it was to be considered a great piece of good fortune if the gods allowed a man to be born in a famous town. But as this good fortune has not fallen to the share of many famous men, such towns as Bethlehem, Eisleben, Stratford, Kamenz, Marbach, not having formerly been particularly brilliant spots in the minds of men, it probably makes little difference to Hans Unwirrsch that he first saw the light of the world in a little town called Neustadt. There are not a few towns and townlets of the same name, but they have not quarreled with one another for the honor of counting our hero among their citizens. Johannes Jakob Nikolaus Unwirrsch did not make his birthplace more famous in the world.