The silver dial, volume 3 (of 3) — Themes and Context

o recently been lifted from it. True enough Otto von Steinbach’s disastrous usurpation had left a fearsome chaos there; but out of it the hand of the master had brought back nearly all the old order; and not by any means the least diligent hands put forth to help him, were those which had compassed the confusion. Under discipline, as Dasipodius had said, Otto von Steinbach could do good work; and never as now had his heedless nature so schooled itself to fulfil the wishes of the reinstated master, and to obey even unmurmuringly the orders of Isaac Habrecht. Doubtless this was still more cheerfully done out of that sense of regained freedom. He found it inexpressibly enjoyable; and the lissomeness it lent his fingers, and perception it gave his brain, made a new creature of him.

That of course had been a terrible moment for him when he delivered up the studio key to Dasipodius, and all his bungling lay naked under the keen eye of the elder Habrecht, and the still more critical handling of Dasipodius; but the chief horologist silenced Isaac’s jeremiads.

“Nay, Isaac,” he said, laying his hand on Habrecht’s arm, “there is no time to spend in regrets. Here already we have St. Barnabas——”

“The Son of Consolation, as the gospels say,” murmured Kaspar.

“St. Barnabas day, and by the feast of St. Laurence, not quite two months hence remember, the Horologe has to be ready.”

“But it never can be so now!” exclaimed Isaac aghast. “You don’t dream of it, master.”

“That’s as it may be,” quietly laughed Dasipodius. “I know only that, God willing, it is my intention to have it finished.”

“But,” continued Isaac, “they don’t deserve any such thing of you. Not if we could do it ten times over.”

“If you will stand discussing the question, I tell you it will be hard enough to get through with it once. Come, are we to work together, or not?”

With a grunt Habrecht signified his assent; and then the task of the Horologe’s deliverance from durance proceeded in good earnest. Not so very long passed before it was restored to the state in which it had been left by Dasipodius, and the workers started afresh upon their fair field.

Content with Dasipodius’ promise that they should still have their Horologe by the date originally agreed upon, the Strassburgers went their several ways, as ardent now in their admiration as they had been eager three months since to hound him from their midst, and their faith in Tobias Hackernagel’s infallibility not a little shaken. The Syndic however, with lowered crest indeed, but not by any means extinguished, consoled himself in the reflection that his meddling had not brought on his devoted head loss of place or of emoluments, as it ran perilously near doing; and persuaded by some still small voice, that temporary self-effacement was the wisest course, retired into the bosom of his family, occasioning much disorganization there. The most eloquent voice of the municipality was now heard scarcely at all on the forensic platform, but so very much by the domestic hearth, that the servants groaned, and were given audibly to asking each other what a bear with a sore head might be like; and the mistresses languished cruelly under the paternal ill temper, sighing as never they had sighed before, for the laggard heroes who should come and carry them off from such wretched durance.

Naturally the one fortunate Andromeda who had found her Perseus, met with the worst time of it all; and many a sour taunt she endured for his sake, from the thwarted Syndic, who found it for certain far-seeing reasons of his own, more convenient to visit his vexation on the hopeless Gretchen than on the real delinquent. Hackernagel knew a hawk from a hernshaw; and perfectly well understood the girl’s power of dogged endurance.