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tions. The rich men pulled out their purses, saying, ‘Come and work for wages!’ The poor men said, ‘We have no time to talk!’ A cripple by the wayside wouldn’t answer him, he was so busy begging; and a child by a cottage-door said it must go to work. All day Merrymind wandered about with his broken-stringed fiddle, and all day he saw the great old man marching round and round the valley with his heavy burden of dust.

“‘It is the dreariest valley that ever I beheld!’ he said to himself. ‘And no place to mend my fiddle in; but one would not like to go away without knowing what has come over the people, or if they have always worked so hard and heavily.’”