The young man, whose skill and strength were well known, smiled, half amused, half incredulous, on his antagonist.  The younger athlete, a lad of thirteen, firmly built and agile, mistook the look for a sneer, and the blood ran fast and hot into his face.  So, Anton accepting the challenge, they immediately began to spar.  They first fearlessly regarded each other, then bowing their heads they rushed forward, butting like rams.  The lad, with his head fixed firm in Anton’s chest, tried to find his adversary’s weakest point, and with his arms round his waist endeavored cunningly to make him slip; but it was soon the young champion who was tripped up, and who in playful, half-serious anger dealt blows and tugs right and left, almost managing to bring Anton sprawling to the ground.  The lad, however, suddenly stopped:  he had lost a little tin ring off his finger and a four-kreuzer piece from his pocket—­too great a loss for a shepherd-boy.  The combat therefore was speedily closed, both antagonists and their partisans hunting in the unmowed grass until the treasures were again trove.

At the same time an elderly man approached and opened the gate—­a peasant evidently, although, instead of the usual long white apron and bib, he wore one of new green linen, shining as satin—­a man of a strong although delicate make, the head slightly stooping forward, and a face that beamed with genuine pleasure as half a dozen voices simultaneously burst forth with a “God greet you, Alois!”

This then was Schuster (or Shoe-maker) Alois, in preparation of whose advent the good aunt had scrubbed a bed-room, and Moidel had beautified the window with pots of blooming geraniums.  The room was a large chamber, set apart for the different ambulatory work-people who came to the Hof in the course of the year.  The weaver, who arrived in the spring to weave the flax which the busy womankind had spun through the winter, had been the last occupant of the room, and had woven no less than two hundred and ninety-three ells of linen, which now in long symmetrical lines were carefully pegged down on the turf of the pleasaunce by Moidel, who walked over them daily with her bare feet, busily watering until the gray threads were turning snowy white.

Later on in the year the sewing-woman would appear, and then the tailor, to make the clothing for this large household, the servants, according to an old custom long since extinct in most countries, being chiefly paid in kind.  Schuster Alois had now come to make the boots for Jakob and the Senner Franz preparatory to their going with the cattle to the Alpine pastures.

I greatly doubt whether the tailor or the weaver was so well waited upon as the shoemaker:  I fancy they were left more to the maids.  Passing the open door of the family house-place, aunt and niece might now be seen sitting hour after hour, the elder lining the soles of Jakob’s stockings with pieces of strong woolen to prevent mending on the Alp, or attending to other needs of his homely toilet; the younger at her paste-board or kneading-trough, whilst Schuster Alois sat between them in the sunny oriel window, and while he steadily plied his awl appeared to be either telling them tales or reciting poetry.