At his favourite tarn, he revelled in the
vast stillness with the greater awe for having heard the hum of men,
and his minstrel dreams had derived fresh vigour from contact with
the active world. But, as usual, he was his brother's chief stay in
the vexations of a reformer. The serfs had much rather their lord
had turned out a freebooter than an improver. Why should they sow
new seeds, when the old had sufficed their fathers? Work, beyond the
regulated days when they scratched up the soil of his old enclosure,
was abhorrent to them. As to his offered coin, they needed nothing
it would buy, and had rather bask in the sun or sleep in the smoke.
A vineyard had never been heard of on Adlerstein mountain: it was
clean contrary to his forefathers' habits; and all came of the bad
drop of restless burgher blood, that could not let honest folk rest.
Ebbo stormed, not merely with words, but blows, became ashamed of his
violence, tried to atone for it by gifts and kind words, and in
return was sulkily told that he would bring more good to the village
by rolling the fiery wheel straight down hill at the wake, than by
all his new-fangled ways.
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