When it
was too dark to see to plough any more he took Fritz Friedleburg's horse
back home again, and then he went home himself.
All of his neighbors thought that he was crazy, for it was nothing but
plough, plough, plough, morning and noon and night, spring and summer
and autumn. Frost and darkness alone kept him from his labor. His stable
was full of fine horses, and he worked them until they dropped in the
furrows that he was always ploughing.
"Yes; Hans is crazy," they all said; but when Hans heard them talk in
this way he only winked to himself and went on with his ploughing, for
he felt that he knew this from that.
But ill luck danced in his pocket with the golden nobles, and from the
day that he closed his bargain with it he was an unhappy man. He had no
comfort of living, for it was nothing but work, work, work. He was up
and away at his ploughing at the first dawn of day, and he never came
home till night had fallen; so, though he ploughed golden nobles, he did
not turn up happiness in the furrows along with them. After he had eaten
his supper he would sit silently behind the stove, warming his fingers
and thinking of some quicker way of doing his ploughing. For it seemed
to him that the gold-pieces came in very slowly, and he blamed himself
that he had not asked his luck to let him turn up three at a time
instead of only one at the end of each furrow; so he had no comfort in
his gathering wealth.
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