How fared it, meanwhile, with Speckbacher? He was sharpening a coulter outside the stable of his little cottage at Rinn, which stands amidst a clump of larch and beech-trees; when Maria his wife smilingly came up to him to show him that his youngest infant had just cut its first tooth, and to ask him if it did not remind him of a pearl upon a rose-leaf. Just then, his rustic servant Zoppel put a little slip of wood into his hand, bearing the inscription roughly endorsed, "'Tis time!"
Down went the coulter; he kissed wife and infant, and hurried into the house, followed, wherever he went, by his little son Anderl, who wistfully eyed him as he took up his rifle.
The last word having been spoken cheerily, Speckbacher sped on his way, watched only for a minute by Maria, who felt a tear glistening in her eye and did not wish him to see it. So she re-entered the house.
Meanwhile, the little boy ran after him.
"Father! let me go too!"
"You? you little rogue! No, no, not this time. You must stay at home and take care of your mother."
"But she doesn't want taking care of, father!—Besides, there's Zoppel.—Do let me go!"
"When you are a bigger boy, you shall, I promise you."
"Perhaps there will be no fighting then."