'Tis twenty years now
since I crossed the marshes, for we grow home-keepers in old age;
but I mind it as if it was yesterday. Up and down, the road keeps
right on from here to Mittwalden; and nothing all the way but the
good green pine-trees, big and little, and water-power! water-power
at every step, sir. We once sold a bit of forest, up there beside
the high-road; and the sight of minted money that we got for it has
set me ciphering ever since what all the pines in Grunewald would
amount to.'
'I suppose you see nothing of the Prince?' inquired Otto.
'No,' said the young man, speaking for the first time, 'nor want
to.'
'Why so? is he so much disliked?' asked Otto.
'Not what you might call disliked,' replied the old gentleman, 'but
despised, sir.'
'Indeed,' said the Prince, somewhat faintly.
'Yes, sir, despised,' nodded Killian, filling a long pipe, 'and, to
my way of thinking, justly despised. Here is a man with great
opportunities, and what does he do with them? He hunts, and he
dresses very prettily - which is a thing to be ashamed of in a man -
and he acts plays; and if he does aught else, the news of it has not
come here.'
'Yet these are all innocent,' said Otto. 'What would you have him
do - make war?'
'No, sir,' replied the old man. 'But here it is; I have been fifty
years upon this River Farm, and wrought in it, day in, day out; I
have ploughed and sowed and reaped, and risen early, and waked late;
and this is the upshot: that all these years it has supported me and
my family; and been the best friend that ever I had, set aside my
wife; and now, when my time comes, I leave it a better farm than
when I found it.
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