the covering necessary to house his crops, while to-morrow he will be
heard groaning over empty garners. Abundance and famine travel the earth
hard upon each other's heels, and it is not surprising that he who lives
by his wits should sometimes fail of his harvest, as well as he who lives
by his hands."

"If constant custom can secure success, the pious Conrad should be
prosperous," answered Maso, "for, of all machinery, that of sin is the
least seldom idle. His trade at least can never fail for want of
employers."

"Thou hast it, Signor Maso; and it is for this especial reason that I wish
my parents had educated me for a bishoprick. He that is charged with
reproving his fellow creatures for their vices need never know an idle
hour."

"Thou dost not understand what thou sayest," put in Conrad; "love for the
saints has much fallen away since my youth, and where there is one
Christian ready now to bestow his silver, in order to get the blessing of
some favorite shrine, there were then ten. I have heard the elders of us
pilgrims say, that, fifty years since, 'twas a pleasure to bear the sins
of a whole parish, for ours is a business in which the load does not so
much depend on the amount as the quality; and, in their time there were
willing offerings, frank confessions, and generous consideration for those
who undertook the toil."

"In such a trade, the less thou hast to answer for, in behalf of others,
the more will pass to thy credit on the score of thine own backslidings,"
pithily remarked Nicklaus Wagner, who was a sturdy Protestant, and apt
enough at levelling these side-hits at those who professed a faith,