the bustle before the smithy.

How Adam had come from the market-place to the Richtberg, is a story
speedily told.

He was the only child of his dead parents, and early learned his father's
trade. When his mother died, the old man gave his son and partner his
blessing, and some florins to pay his expenses, and sent him away. He
went directly to Nuremberg, which the old man praised as the high-school
of the smith's art, and there remained twelve years. When, at the end
of that time, news came to Adam that his father was dead, and he had
inherited the forge on the market-place, he wondered to find that he was
thirty years old, and had gone no farther than Nuremberg. True,
everything that the rest of the world could do in the art of forging
might be learned there.

He was a large, heavy man, and from childhood had moved slowly and
reluctantly from the place where he chanced to be.

If work was pressing, he could not be induced to leave the anvil, even
when evening had closed in; if it was pleasant to sit over the beer, he
remained till after the last man had gone. While working, he was as
mute as the dead to everything that was passing around him; in the tavern
he rarely spoke, and then said only a few words, yet the young artists,
sculptors, workers in gold and students liked to see the stout drinker
and good listener at the table, and the members of his guild only
marvelled how the sensible fellow, who joined in no foolish pranks, and
worked in such good earnest, held aloof from them to keep company with
these hairbrained folk, and remained a Papist.