“The Curé is sure to take care to get another builder into Haffert this time!”
A week before St Rochus, Knoups went to the brewer in the town to order the _kermis_ beer for the dancing-tent as usual. There was no brewery at Haffert, or Knoups would certainly not have gone outside the village.
“I have nothing but new beer for you, Master Knoups,” said the brewer; “you will find there’s going to be sharp competition this year.”
“Why, you know, don’t you, that Stamel-Joob has rented the piece of land just opposite your house, on the other side of the Haffert road?”
“Stammering Joob is going into partnership with Crippled Manes, and they mean to get a big dancing-tent over from Prussia, and set it up there.”
The landlord of the “Sun” stared at the brewer with all his eyes. He was vainly seeking for arguments to combat his own inner conviction that Stammering Joob the never-sober host of the “City of Algiers,” and Crippled Manes the recruiting-sergeant, who also did a good business as a kind of broker in procuring substitutes for unwilling conscripts, were two dangerous opponents, and capable of anything.
“Where should they get the money from?” he suddenly exclaimed.
Mathis became lost in thought for some minutes, and at last whispered, looking at his purveyor with flashing eyes,—
“Do you think the Curé of Haffert could be mixed up in this?”
Once more the brewer shrugged his shoulders.
“All that I know,” said he, “is that Stammering Joob and Crippled Manes have ordered sixty casks of beer of me.”
Mathis ordered only twenty casks for the present, and returned home with a long face.
Two days before St Rochus, three great Prussian freight-waggons, laden with planks and battens and canvas, passed through Haffert, and stopped at the Schei, right opposite the “Sun” inn. A moment after, Crippled Manes was seen hobbling up from another direction, with an old police-cap on his head, and followed by a number of schoolboys and loafers from the town, where the rumour of the arrival of the “foreign dancing-tent” had already spread. A large number of hands went to work at once; timbers were unloaded, posts set up, canvas spread out; and in the middle of all the bustle the lame recruiting-sergeant moved about with his bottle of Hollands, encouraging the workmen, and sometimes garnishing the offered glass with some such facetious remark as, “To the health of M. le Curé of Haffert;” or, “To the health of Mathis Knoups, our neighbour!”