"Not to me?"
"Not even to you,--begging your pardon."
"Give it to me, then, and let me give you something in return."
"I hardly know how to answer you, uncle. Really, I cannot let it go out of the house."
"Stay there then," he said to the unconscious tool, as he returned it to its place; and shortly after he and Ibrahim went down the hill.
People came from a great distance, some from the next valley, to hear and admire the clock. Franzl was especially delighted with the praise bestowed upon it by the weight-maker, one of the chief men of her village. "Such a piece of workmanship has not left our part of the country for a hundred years," he declared. "What a pity it has got to be silent through the journey, and cannot play from here to Odessa, to tell every one it comes from the Black Forest, where science has been brought to such perfection!" Franzl's face glowed with pleasure. It takes the Knuslingers to talk like that. She told of the patience and zeal with which Lenz had labored on this work; how he had often got up in the night to carry out some idea that had come into his mind. There were secrets in that clock that no one could fathom. She, of course, was initiated into its mysteries. No maiden's heart ever beat more tumultuously at a first declaration of love than Franzl's when the first man of her village said, "And the house, Franzl, whence proceeds a work so delicate and exact, the house must have been well ordered too; you have contributed your share, Franzl."
"With all deference to others, I must say there is no one quite equal to us Knuslingers. This is the only man who has said just the right thing. The others stood there like cows before a new barn door. Moo! moo! Thank Heaven, I come from Knuslingen!"--so spoke Franzl's whole manner. You could read it in her hand, which she laid upon her beating heart, and in the frequent raising of her eyes to heaven.
Lenz could not help laughing at her seasoning every meal with congratulations that he was now so famous in Knuslingen.
Knuslingen was not such a small place either. It had two chapels of ease, at Fuchsberg and at Knebringen.
"To-morrow evening I shall close the case and send off The Magic Flute," said Lenz.