"I was only watching the wheels go round, father," said a sturdy little fellow in a soiled leathern jacket, starting up with a half-mischievous look in his blue eyes.
"And what hast thou to do with the wheels, eh? Suppose this clock is stopped or put wrong some day by one of thy tricks, what shall I, Hans Scheller, custodian of St. Martin's Church, say to the Town Council? Dost thou know what birch porridge is, thou rogue? Beware, or I'll give thee such a taste of it as shall make thee go round faster than the wheels."
Poor Hans was indeed kept in constant terror by his inquiring son's uncontrollable habit of going wherever he ought not. The old Church of St. Martin was a famous play-ground for any boy, with its shadowy aisles, and countless pillars, and tall towers, and deep niches, and half-ruined battlements; and the worthy custodian, when he awoke from his after-dinner nap in his little room at the foot of the great clock tower, never knew whether he should find his hopeful boy hiding behind the altar-screen, trying to blow the organ bellows, playing hide-and-seek among the pinnacles of the roof, or sitting astride of a carved spout a hundred and sixty feet above the pavement.
All this, however, might have been forgiven; for the old custodian was really as fond of his "little rogue" as the boy, with all his wildness, was of him. But the one thing that Hans could not pardon was the danger caused by his son's restless inquisitiveness to his beloved church clock. It was his pride and glory to be able to tell every one that during the whole forty years that he had been in charge of the "St. Martin's Kirche," the clock had never stopped or gone wrong; and nothing would convince him that it was not by far the finest clock in the whole world.
"Don't tell me of the big clock of Strasburg Cathedral," he would say, with an obstinate shake of his gray head. "Could it go forty years on end, think you, without the slightest deviation? No, that it couldn't, nor any other clock on the face of the earth except this one."
Mindful of Kaspar's inquiring turn of mind, his father, having to do some marketing in the town the day after our hero's stolen visit to the clock, locked the door of the tower, and took the key along with him.
"No harm can happen now," he muttered; "and, in any case, I shall be back before he gets out of school."
But, as ill-luck would have it, the teacher was called away by some business that afternoon, and the boys got out of school more than an hour earlier than usual. Kaspar, finding his father gone, went straight to the door of the clock tower, and looked rather blank on discovering that it was locked. But he was not one to be easily stopped when he had once made up his mind. Getting out upon the roof, and crawling along a cornice where only a cat or a school-boy could have found footing, he crept through an air-hole right into the clock-room.
For some time he was as happy as a child in a toy shop, running from one marvel to another, until at length he discovered another hole, and thrusting his head through it, found himself looking down upon the market-place through the face of the clock itself. But when he tried to withdraw his head again, it would not come.
It was such a queer scrape to be in that Kaspar was more inclined to laugh than to be frightened; but suddenly a thought struck him which scared him in earnest: his neck was in the track of the minute-hand, which, when it reached him, must inevitably tear his head off!