grandmother so arranged it that Stineli got, now and then, a spare
moment; but the work in the house increased daily. Rico passed many
hours standing on the threshold of his cottage looking longingly across
the way, in the hope of seeing Stineli come out.

Towards September, when people often sat before their houses in order to
enjoy, to the utmost, the last warm evenings of the season, the
schoolmaster placed himself before his door, but he looked very thin and
coughed continually; and at last, one morning when he tried to rise, his
strength deserted him completely, and he fell back upon his pillow.

There he lay very still, and busy with all sorts of thoughts; and he
wondered what would come to pass when he died. He had no children, and
his wife had been dead for a long time, and there was only in old
maid-servant to live with him and take care of the house. He was
principally occupied in thinking of what would become of all the things
that belonged to him when he should be gone; and, as his fiddle hung
directly opposite to him on the wall, he said to himself, "I must leave
that behind me too."

Then he remembered the day when Rico stood before him and played on the
instrument, and he felt as if he had rather let the boy have the fiddle
than to let it go to a distant cousin who did not understand the use of
it at all. And he thought that, if it were to go very cheap, perhaps
Rico could buy it. Presently he bethought himself that if he could not
use the violin, neither would he have any use for money. For all that,
he could not bring himself to let the instrument, for which he had paid
down six hard gulden, go for nothing.

So he pondered and pondered how he could manage to obtain something in