Page:Story of the bitter wedding (1).pdf/5

 Siegeland,---though for me all rest and joy are for ever vanished.'

'Aye, aye,' replied Master Almerich, 'I thought you were going to the dance, my hearty,---I heard you crying out a bitter wedding, and I thought to myself, 'Aha, he does not get the right one.'

'And that's true enough,' replied Berthold; 'he does not get the right one---that Hildebrand! I will tell you the whole matter, Master Almerich, as you seem to be going if I guess right.'

'Ah, yes, good heavens!' sighed the dwarf: 'surely, surely, I would be going to the wedding, if I had only got a pair of stout legs, but look you here, my dear child, what a miserable stump is this for crawling down the mountain!---I am asthmatic too, and my goitre has been enlarging these last fifty years---and that wallet has galled my back sore all yesterday in climbing over the rough hills--. Heaven knows when I shall get to the wedding! There was such a talking about it on the other side of the mountain, that, thought I to myself, I will away to the wedding also and make some money; so I took my fiddle and began to crawl up the ascent---yesterday I became quite exhausted---and now I must lay me down here by the side of the road and submit to fate. Tell me all about the wedding when you re-