And again he fell to fiddling lustily, until they arrived at the spot of the fire. He got down from the cart, and entered a neighbor's cottage. All the folks pressed up to the old fiddler, tendering words of comfort, and promising that they would all help him to rebuild his cottage. "No, no!" replied Hans; "'tis all well. I have no home--I'm one of the cuckoo tribe that has no resting-place of its own, and only now and then slips into the swallow's nest. For the short time I have to live, I shall have no trouble in finding quarters wherever I go. I can now climb up into a tree again, and look down upon the world in which I have no longer any thing to call my own. Ay, ay, 'twas wrong in me ever to have had any thing of my own except my precious little fiddle here!" No objection was raised to the reasoning of the strange old man, and the country-folks from a distance went their ways home with the satisfaction of knowing that the old fiddler was still alive and well. Hans properly belonged to the whole country round about: his loss would have been a public one: much as if the old linden-tree on the Landeck Hill close by had been thrown down unexpectedly in the night Hans was as merry as a grig when Caspar the smith gave him an old shirt, the carpenter Joseph a pair of breeches--and so on. "Well, to be sure, folks may now say that I carry the whole village on my back!" said he; and he gave to each article of dress the name of the donor. "A coat indeed like this, which a friend has worn nicely smooth for one, fits to a T. I was never at my ease in a new coat; and you know I used always to go to the church, and rub the sleeves in the wax that dropped from the holy tapers, to make them comfortable and fit for wear. But this time I'm saved the trouble, and I'm for all the world like a new-born babe who is fitted with clothes without measuring. Ay, ay, you may laugh; but 'tis a fact--I'm new-born." And in truth it quite seemed so with the old man: the wild merriment of former years, which had slumbered for a while, all burst out anew. A fellow just now entered who had been active in extinguishing the fire, and having his hand in the work, had been at the same time no less actively engaged in quenching a certain internal fire--and in truth, as was plain to be seen, more than was needed. On seeing him, the old fiddler cried out, "By Jove, how I envy the fellow's jollity!" All the folks laughed; but presently the merriment was interrupted by the entrance of the magistrate with his notary, come to investigate the cause of the fire, and take an inventory of the damage.