“Slide!” echoed Paul.  “How can we slide when it is summer and no ice?”

“Oh, you greenhorns,” laughed the boy.  “You do not know that ‘slide’ means a holiday.”

“We have been on our holiday, and are on our way home to go to school.”

“School!  I should run away from that instead of running to it,” remarked the blacksmith, “no one there learns how to use the hammer and anvil to make a horse-shoe.”

“But he learns other useful things,” said Paul.

“What are you going to be when you grow up?”

“A teacher, like my father.”

“Bah, a teacher!  I suppose it is a great pleasure to cudgel some boy every day.  Oh, what I have endured from teachers is more than I can tell.”

“A good teacher knows how to manage a bad boy without using the cudgel.  It is a weak teacher who knows no other way.”

“Oh, just hear our wise one!  Let me tell you that your father, great as you appear to think him, could not manage me.”

“No, not now, but if you were a boy under his care you would see that he would manage you.”

“What are you going to be?” he asked of Fritz.

“A clothing merchant, like my father.”

“And cheat buyers by selling poor cloth.”

“My father is no swindler,” cried Fritz.

Franz had stood back; he did not like the looks of the group, but the roughest looking of the three now put the same question to him.

“A forest-keeper, like my father.”

“Then it would be well for you to learn to be a butcher, as I am doing, so you could kill wild animals and dress them.”

“Dress them!” exclaimed the boys in surprise.

“Yes, cut them up for packing, as we do cattle.  Do you see this butcher knife?” and he held it up to view.

The triplets did not like the look of the butcher and his knife.  They were anxious to move on and let the three strangers finish their sleep in the grass, but this was not the wish of their new acquaintances.

“I will tell you what we will do,” said the butcher after the three had talked a moment in a low tone.  “We are not far from a village where we intend begging food.  We will each take one of you boys to help, and when we reach the end of the village we will divide what we have begged.”

“No, we have never done that,” cried Fritz.  “We will not go from door to door holding out our hands.”

“No, we cannot do that, but we will each give you a nickel,” said Paul quickly, for he noticed frowns upon the faces of the strangers.

“Agreed!” said the three in a breath, and, rising to their feet, they held out their hands.

Paul and Franz gave out their share immediately, but Fritz fingered so long that the gold-piece fell out, and was seen by the three pairs of eyes.  Fritz picked it up quickly and replaced it in his purse, and the three nickels were in the grimy hands of the strangers, who set out for the village.