[Interval of two weeks.]

Wedding party assembled in old Huss’s drawing-room.  Hoch placid and content, Gretchen weeping over her hard fate.  Enter old Huss’s head bookkeeper.  Huss says fiercely, “I gave you three weeks to find out why your books don’t balance, and to prove that you are not a defaulter; the time is up—­find me the missing property or you go to prison as a thief.”  Bookkeeper:  “I have found it.”  “Where?” Bookkeeper (sternly—­tragically):  “In the bridegroom’s pile!—­behold the thief—­see him blench and tremble!” [Sensation.] Paul Hoch:  Lost, lost!”—­falls over the cow in a swoon and is handcuffed.  Gretchen:  “Saved!” Falls over the calf in a swoon of joy, but is caught in the arms of Hans Schmidt, who springs in at that moment.  Old Huss:  “What, you here, varlet?  Unhand the maid and quit the place.”  Hans (still supporting the insensible girl):  “Never!  Cruel old man, know that I come with claims which even you cannot despise.”

Huss:  “What, you? name them.”

Hans:  “Listen then.  The world has forsaken me, I forsook the world, I wandered in the solitude of the forest, longing for death but finding none.  I fed upon roots, and in my bitterness I dug for the bitterest, loathing the sweeter kind.  Digging, three days agone, I struck a manure mine!—­a Golconda, a limitless Bonanza, of solid manure!  I can buy you all, and have mountain ranges of manure left!  Ha-ha, now thou smilest a smile!” [Immense sensation.] Exhibition of specimens from the mine.  Old Huss (enthusiastically):  “Wake her up, shake her up, noble young man, she is yours!” Wedding takes place on the spot; bookkeeper restored to his office and emoluments; Paul Hoch led off to jail.  The Bonanza king of the Black Forest lives to a good old age, blessed with the love of his wife and of his twenty-seven children, and the still sweeter envy of everybody around.

We took our noon meal of fried trout one day at the Plow Inn, in a very pretty village (Ottenhoefen), and then went into the public room to rest and smoke.  There we found nine or ten Black Forest grandees assembled around a table.  They were the Common Council of the parish.  They had gathered there at eight o’clock that morning to elect a new member, and they had now been drinking beer four hours at the new member’s expense.  They were men of fifty or sixty years of age, with grave good-natured faces, and were all dressed in the costume made familiar to us by the Black Forest stories; broad, round-topped black felt hats with the brims curled up all round; long red waistcoats with large metal buttons, black alpaca coats with the waists up between the shoulders.  There were no speeches, there was but little talk, there were no frivolities; the Council filled themselves gradually, steadily, but surely, with beer, and conducted themselves with sedate decorum, as became men of position, men of influence, men of manure.

We had a hot afternoon tramp up the valley, along the grassy bank of a rushing stream of clear water, past farmhouses, water-mills, and no end of wayside crucifixes and saints and Virgins.  These crucifixes, etc., are set up in memory of departed friends, by survivors, and are almost as frequent as telegraph-poles are in other lands.