“Oh, no, no, Uncle Fritz.  We would rather see you than anybody else,” cried Hans.  “And here comes mother.  She will be just as glad as we are.”

That evening, after Hans had shown his uncle around the village, and he had called on his old friends, he settled himself in the chimney-corner with the children about him.

“Talk to us about Strasburg, Uncle Fritz,” begged Gretchen.

“Please tell us about the storks,” said Bertha.  “Are there great numbers of the birds in the city, and do they build their nests on the chimneys?”

“Yes, you can see plenty of storks flying overhead if you will come back with me,” said Uncle Fritz, laughingly.  “They seem to know the people love them.  If a stork makes his home about any one’s house, it is a sign of good fortune to the people who live there.

“‘It will surely come,’ they say to themselves, ’and the storks will bring it.’  Do you wonder the people like the birds so much?”

“I read a story about a mother stork,” said Bertha, thoughtfully.  “She had a family of baby birds.  They were not big enough to leave their nest, when a fire broke out in the chimney where it was built.  Poor mother bird!  She could have saved herself.  But she would not leave her babies.  So she stayed with them and they were all burned to death together.”

“I know the story.  That happened right in Strasburg,” said her uncle.

“Please tell us about the beautiful cathedral with its tall tower,” said Hans.  “Sometime, uncle, I am going to Strasburg, if I have to walk there, and then I shall want to spend a whole day in front of the wonderful clock.”

“You’d better have a lunch with you, Hans, and then you will not get hungry.  But really, my dear little nephew, I hope the time will soon come when you can pay me a long visit.  As for the clock, you will have to stay in front of it all night as well as all day, if you are to see all it can show you.”

“I know about cuckoo-clocks, of course,” said Gretchen, “but the little bird is the only figure that comes out on those.  There are ever so many different figures on the Strasburg clock, aren’t there, Uncle Fritz?”

“A great, great many.  Angels strike the hours.  A different god or goddess appears for each day in the week.  Then, at noon and at midnight, Jesus and his twelve apostles come out through a door and march about on a platform.

“You can imagine what the size of the clock must be when I tell you that the figures are as large as people.  When the procession of the apostles appears, a gilded cock on the top of the tower flaps its wings and crows.

“I cannot begin to tell you all about it.  It is as good as a play, and, as I told Hans, he would have to stay many hours near it to see all the sights.”

“I should think a strong man would be needed to wind it up,” said his nephew.

“The best part of it is that it does not need to be wound every day,” replied Uncle Fritz.  “They say it will run for years without being touched.  Of course, travellers are coming to Strasburg all the time.  They wish to see the clock, but they also come to see the cathedral itself.  It is a very grand building, and, as you know, the spire is the tallest one in all Europe.