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The story of the chest was an excellent theme for fun and waggery in the village. Whenever anybody met Conrad, something was said about the mean way in which Mike had acted toward him; and Conrad talked himself into a rage against his brother, which increased with every word he said.

The brothers were of different dispositions in all things, and went their different ways. Conrad kept a cow, which he would yoke with the cow of his neighbor Christian to do field-work. When there was nothing to be done afield, he broke stones on the turnpike for fifteen creutzers, or about five cents, a day. He was very near-sighted. When he struck a flint to light his pipe, he always held his face very near the spunk, to see whether it was lit. All the village called him “blind Conrad.” He was short and thick-set.

Mike was the opposite of all this. He was tall and lank, and walked with a firm step. He dressed like a farmer, not because he was one, (for he was not,) but because it was of advantage to him in his business. He dealt in old horses; and people have great faith in a horse bought of a man who is dressed in farmers’ clothes. Mike was what is called in Germany a “spoiled blacksmith,”–one who had deserted his trade and lived by dickering. He rented out and sold his fields, and lived like a gentleman. He was a person of importance in the whole country round. In a circuit of twenty miles–in Wurtemberg, in Sigmaringen and Hechingen, and in Baden–he knew the condition and the muster of every stable just as accurately as a great statesman knows the statistics of foreign states and the position of cabinets; and, as the latter sounds the state of public feeling in the newspapers, so did Mike in the taverns. In every village he had a scapegrace as minister-resident, with whom he often held secret conferences, and who, in cases of importance, would send him couriers,–to wit, themselves,–asking nothing but a good drink-money, in the strict sense of the word. Besides these, he had secret agents who would incite people to revolutions in their stables; and thus his shed, which served the purpose of a stable, was generally tenanted by some broken-down hack in the course of preparation for publicity,– i.e. for sale on market-day. He would dye the hair over its eyes and file its teeth; and, though the poor beast was thereby disabled from eating any thing but bran, and must starve on any thing else, he cared little, for at the next market he was sure to sell it again.

He had some curious tricks of the trade. Sometimes he instructed an understrapper to pretend to be making a trade with him. They would become very noisy, and at last Mike would say, in a very loud tone of voice, “I can’t trade. I’ve no feed and no stabling; and, if I must give the horse away for a ducat, away he must go.” Or he would pay some stupid farmer’s lout to ride the horse up and down, and then observe, “If a man had that horse that knew what to do with it he might make something out of it. The build is capital: the bones are English. If he had a little flesh he would be worth his twenty ducats.” If a purchaser turned up, he would undertake to get him the horse, stipulating a commission for himself for the sale of his own property. What he hated most was a warranty: rather than sign that he always agreed to throw off a ducat or two. Nevertheless, he had many a lawsuit, which eat up the horse and the profit; but the unsettled life he led had such a charm that he could not think of leaving it, and he always hoped that the profit on one speculation would compensate for the losses on another. His principle was never to leave the market without a bargain. The Jews of the markets were also his accomplices, and he would return their favors in kind.