The little Barefoot | Project Gutenberg

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THE LITTLE BAREFOOT.

EARLY in the morning of an autumnal day, when the morning mist lay upon the ground, two children, a boy and a girl of six and seven years old, went hand in hand through the back, or garden path, out of the village. The girl appeared the oldest, and carried slate, books, and a writing-book under her arm; the boy had the same in a gray linen satchel, which was slung over his shoulder. The girl wore a cap of white drill that reached only to the forehead, and made the full arch of her brow the more conspicuous. The boy was bareheaded. The footstep of the boy only could be heard, for he had strong shoes on his feet; but the girl was barefoot. Where the path permitted, the children went close together; but, when the hedges made it too narrow, the girl always went first.

[8]Upon the yellow leaves of the shrubbery lay a white frost, and the berries of the hawthorn, the tall stems of the wild brier, looked as though they were silvered over. The sparrows in the hedges twitter and fly in uneasy flocks close to the children, then light again not far from them, twittering and chirping, till at length they fly to a garden, where they light upon an apple-tree, so that the dry leaves rustle, and fall to the ground. A magpie flies quickly up from the path across the fields, and then rests upon the great pear-tree, where the ravens still cawed. This magpie must have told them a secret, for the ravens flew up and crossed over the tree, and an old one let himself down upon the topmost wavering branch, while the others found for themselves, upon the lower branches, good places, where they could rest and look out. They appeared to desire to know why the children, with their school-books, struck into the side street, and wandered out of the village. One of the ravens flew like a scout, or spy, and placed himself upon a stunted willow by the fish-pond. But the children went quietly on their way by the alders near the pond, till they came out again into the street; then crossed to the other side of the street where stood a small, low house. The house is entirely closed, and the children stand at the door and knock softly. Then the girl calls courageously, “Father! Mother!” and the boy timidly repeats, “Father! Mother!” At[9] length the girl seizes the door-latch, and presses it softly up; the boards rustle and she listens, but nothing comes. Now she ventures in quicker strokes to press the latch up and down, but only the sound echoes from the deserted house. No human voice answers. The boy places his lips upon a crack in the door and calls again, “Father! Mother!” Inquiringly he looks up to his sister; and when he looks down again his breath upon the door-latch has become hoar-frost.

From the mist-covered village sound the measured strokes of the thresher; now rapid and loud, falling confusedly, and now with slow and wearied strokes; then again clear and vivid; then stifled and hollow. The children stand as though bewildered. At length they cease to call and knock, and sit down upon scattered logs of wood. These lay piled around the stem of a mountain-ash, overshadowing the side of the house, and now ornamented with its red autumn berries. The children rivet their eyes upon the door of the house; but all remains silent and closed.

“Father brought this wood from Moosbrunnenwood,” said the girl, pointing to the log upon which she was sitting; then she added, with a wise look, “it gives good warmth, and there is a great deal of rosin in it that burns like a torch, but it costs a great deal to split it.”

“If I was grown up,” said the boy, “I would take father’s great axe and the two iron wedges[10] and split it into pieces as smooth as glass, and I would make a beautiful pile of it, like that of the coal-burner Mathew, in the forest; and then when father comes home he will be glad, and he will say, ‘Who did that?’ Don’t you dare to tell him,” and he pointed his finger threateningly at his sister.

The latter appeared to have a dawning perception that it would be of no use to wait for father and mother, and she cast a melancholy glance at the boy; and then, looking at his shoes, she said, “Then you must also put on father’s boots. But come, we will skip stones in the lake, and see if I can throw farther than you; and, as we go, I will give you a riddle to guess. What wood is that which warms without burning?”

“No, I don’t mean that. The wood that they split makes one warm without burning it.” When standing by the hedge she asked, “It sits upon a little stem, hath a little red coat, and its belly is full of stones. What may that be?”

The boy knit his brows and cried out, “Hush! Don’t tell me what it is. It is a hip-berry.”

The girl nodded applause, and made a face as though she told him the riddle for the first time, whereas she had often told it before to divert him from sorrow.

The sun had now scattered the fog, and the[11] little valley came out in clear shining sunlight as the children turned towards the pond and began to make the flat stones dance through the water.

In passing, the girl lifted the latch again many times, but the door did not open, and nothing appeared at the window. They soon played, full of joy and laughter, at the pond, and the girl seemed especially glad that her brother was always the most skilful, and, beating her at the sport, he became wholly gay. She, indeed, made herself less skilful than she really was, for her stones plumped, at the first throw, deep into the water, at which the boy laughed loud. In the zeal of their sport, both children forgot where they were, and why they had come there, and yet to both it was melancholy and strange.

In that house, now so silent and closed, had dwelt for some time back Josenhans, with his wife and two children, Amrie (Anna Maria) and Dami (Damian). The father was a wood-cutter in the forest, but also handy at any work; for the house which he had purchased in a neglected condition, he had repaired himself, and wholly covered in the roof. In the autumn he intended to whiten the wall of the interior. The chalk for that purpose was lying in a pit covered with brushwood. His wife was one of the best workwomen in the village. Day and night, in sorrow and in joy, she was a helper to every one; always willing, always[12] ready, for she had early taught her children, especially Amrie, to take care of themselves. Industry, contentment, and domestic competency made the house one of the happiest in the village. An insidious illness prostrated the mother, and the next evening the father also, and after a few days two coffins were borne on the same evening from the humble house. The children were taken into one of the neighbor’s houses during the illness of their parents, and they learnt their death only on Monday, when they were dressed in their Sunday clothes, to follow in the funeral procession.

Neither Josenhans nor his wife had relations in the place, and yet loud weeping and praise of the dead were heard at the grave; and the Mayor of the village led both children by the hand, as all three followed in the procession. At the grave both children were still and quiet; they were even cheerful, although they often asked, “Where were their father and mother?” They ate at the table of the Mayor, and everybody was kind to them. When they left the table, they received little tarts wrapped in paper to take with them.

As the evening came on, the Mayor ordered a man of the name of Krappenzacher to take Dami home with him, and a woman, called Brown Mariann, to take care of Amrie; but now the children would not be separated. They wept aloud, and insisted upon being taken to their parents. Dami, at length, was coaxed by false pretences, but[13] Amrie could not be forced to leave her brother. At length the foreman of the Mayor took her in his arms and carried her, by main strength, to the house of Brown Mariann. There she found her own bed from the parents’ house; but she would not lie down upon it, and wept herself to sleep upon the floor, when they laid her all dressed as she was upon her bed. Dami was also heard weeping and screaming aloud, but soon he was still. The much defamed Brown Mariann showed this evening how considerate and tender she was for the orphan intrusted to her care. For many years she had been bereft of her children, and as she stood by the sleeping girl she said in a low voice, “Ah! happy sleep of childhood; it weeps and instantly falls asleep without the twilight of hope, without the anxiety of dreams.” She sighed deeply.

The next morning, early, Amrie went to dress her brother and to console him for what had happened. “As soon as father comes back,” she said, “he will take you home and pay the Krappenzacher.” Then both the children went out to the parental house, knocked on the door and wept aloud.

At length Mathew, the coal-burner, who lived near, came and carried them both to school. He asked the schoolmaster to make the children understand that their parents were dead, for Amrie especially appeared incapable of believing[14] it. The teacher did all that was possible, and they became more quiet and resigned. But from the school they went again to the parents’ house, and waited there, hungry and thirsty, till some compassionate person carried them away.

The person who had a mortgage upon the Josenhans house took it, and the payment which Josenhans had already made was lost; for, according to the custom of the village, whatever had been paid was forfeited. There were many houses in the village beside the Josenhans that remained untenanted. All the possessions of their parents were sold, and a small sum obtained for the children, but not sufficient to pay their board. Thus they became parish orphans, and were of course boarded with those who would take them at the lowest price.

Amrie informed her brother one day with delight, that she had found out where the cuckoo clock of their parents was. Mathew, the coal-burner, had bought it; in the evening they went and stood near the house and waited till the clock cried cuckoo,—then they looked at each other and laughed.

The children continued every morning to go to their parents’ house, knock at the door, call and wait. Then they played at the fish-pond, as we have seen them to-day. Afterwards they listened to a call which they used not to hear at this season of the year, for the cuckoo at Mathew’s called eight times.

[15]“We must to the school,” said Amrie, and hastened with her brother through the garden paths into the village. As they passed behind the barn of Farmer Rodel, Dami said, “Our guardian has had a great deal of threshing done to-day,” and he pointed to the straw that hung as a trophy over the half door of the barn. Amrie nodded silently.

FARMER RODEL, whose house, ornamented with red striped beams, and a pious sentence, enclosed in the form of a heart, stood not far from the Josenhans dwelling, had himself appointed by the Mayor, guardian of the orphan children. His guardianship consisted in nothing more than in preserving the unsold clothes of their father, and when he met or passed one of the children in the street he would ask, “Have you clothes enough?” and, without waiting to be answered, he would pass on. Yet the children felt a strange pride in having that great farmer called their guardian. They often stood by the great house and looked longingly at it, as though they expected something, they knew not what, and they sat often down by the ploughs and harrows at the corner of the shed and read over again and again the pious sentence on the house. The house spoke to them if all others were silent.

The Sunday before All Souls, the children played again before their parents’ deserted house.[17] They seemed, as it were, banished to this place. There came along the wife of Farmer Landfried from the Hochdorfer Road. She had a red silk umbrella under her arm and a dark hymn-book in her hand. She had come to make her last visit in the place of her birth. Yesterday, her servant in a four-horse wagon had taken all her furniture out of the village, and early this morning with her husband and three children she would move to their lately purchased estate in the far-off district of Allgäu. When at some distance she nodded to the children; but they saw nothing but the melancholy expression upon the face of the woman. As she now stood by them she said, “God bless you, children! what do you do here? to whom do you belong?”

“Oh! you poor children,” she cried, striking her hands together; “I should have known you, lass! exactly so did your mother look, when we went to school together. We were good comrades and friends, and your father worked with my cousin, Farmer Rodel. I know all about you—but tell me, Amrie, why have you no shoes on? You will take cold in this wet weather. Say to Mariann that Farmer Landfried’s wife, from Hochdorf, said it was not right to let you run about in this manner; no—you need say nothing. I will speak to her. But, Amrie, you must now be sensible[18] and prudent, and take care of yourself. Think of it—what if thy mother knew that in this time of the year you went about barefoot!”

The child looked earnestly at the woman as though she would say, “Does not my mother then know it?”

“Ah, that is the worst of it,” she said, answering the thought of the child, “that you can never know what good and honest people your parents were; that must elder people tell you. Think of it, Amrie, that it will make your parents happy in heaven when they hear people say, ‘There are the Josenhans children, they are a proof of all goodness. There they see plainly the blessing of good and honest parents.’”

At these last words big tears ran down the cheeks of the farmer’s wife. Painful emotions (that had, indeed, a wholly different source), at these thoughts and words, made them continue to flow. She laid her hand upon the head of the girl, who, at the sight of her tears, began to weep violently. She felt that a good soul had turned towards her, and a dawning belief that her parents were really lost became clearer to her.

The countenance of the women suddenly lighted. She raised her eyes filled with tears to heaven and said, “Thou, good God, has sent this thought to me!” Then she turned to the child and said, “Listen! I will take you with me! My Lisbeth was taken from me at your age. Speak! will you go with me to Allgäu, and always remain with me?”

“Be quiet,” said Amrie, “the good lady will take you also. Is it not so?” she said, timidly. “My Dami may go with us?”

“Then I must remain here,” said Amrie, and took hold of her brother’s hand.

There is sometimes in the soul an emotion where fever and frost contend. It has been so with the stranger, and now she looked upon the child with a species of relief. Through strong emotion, and influenced by the purest benevolence, she would have undertaken a duty whose significance and difficulty she had not sufficiently considered; and especially as she did not know how her husband would take it. Now, as the child herself refused, there intervened a sufficient reason; all was clear again, and she turned quickly from the duty. She had satisfied her heart by proposing it, and now that the objection came not from herself, she had a kind of satisfaction in having offered, without herself taking back her word.

“As you please,” said the stranger; “I will not urge you. Who knows? perhaps it would be better that you should grow up first. It is well to[20] learn to suffer in youth; the good comes easier after we have learnt the evil. Be only honest and good, and never forget that, on account of your parents, as long as God spares my life you shall have a shelter with me. Remember, if it does not go well with you, that you are not left alone in the world. Think of the wife of Farmer Landfried, in Zusmarshofen, in Allgäu. A word more. Don’t say in the village that I would have taken you. It is the way with people—they would blame you because you did not go—but it is as well so. Wait, I will give you something to remember me by.” She sought in her pocket, then suddenly putting her hand to her neck she drew out a five stringed garnet necklace, to which there was fastened a Swedish ducat, and, throwing the ornament over the neck of the child, she kissed her. Amrie looked as one enchanted upon all these proceedings. “For thee, alas! I have nothing,” she said to Dami, who stood with a little switch in his hand which he continued to break into small pieces; “but I will send you a pair of leather trousers of my John’s—they are not entirely new, but you can wear them when you are taller. Now God protect you, dear children! If it is possible I will come to see you again, Amrie. In the mean time send Mariann to me in the church. Remember always to be good, pray constantly for your parents, and never forget that you have a protector in heaven and also upon earth.”

[21]For convenience in walking she had turned up her outer garment; now, at the entrance of the village, she let it down and went on with quick steps without once turning back.

Amrie kept her face bent down in order to see the keepsake upon her neck, but the necklace was too short. Dami was chewing the last piece of his stick when his sister, observing tears in his eyes, said, “We shall see—you will have the most beautiful pair of trousers in the village.”

“And I will ask her to give you a knife. I will stay at home the whole day; perhaps she will come to us.”

“Yes! if she were there already,” said Dami, without knowing what he said. His anger, and the feeling of being rejected, had excited these suspicious reproaches.

At the first stroke of the bell they hastened back to the village. Amrie gave over, with few words, her new ornament into the hands of Mariann, who said, “Thou art fortune’s child! I will take good care of it. Now hasten to the church.”

During the service both children looked constantly at their new friend, and when it was over they waited for her at the door of the church; but the respectable matron was so surrounded by men and women, all claiming her notice, that she could only turn in the circle to answer, sometimes here,[22] sometimes there; thus for the waiting glances of the children she found no attention. She held Rose, the youngest daughter of Farmer Rodel, by the hand. She was a year older than Amrie, and thrust herself constantly before the latter, as though pressingly to take her place by the matron. Had, then, the respectable matron eyes only for Amrie by the last house in the solitude of the village, but in the midst of the people she did not know her? Amrie was frightened, when this thought just dawning in her mind was spoken aloud by Dami; but while she, with her brother, followed at a distance the great crowd that surrounded the matron, she gave utterance herself to the same thought. The matron vanished at last into the house of Farmer Rodel, and the children turned quietly back.

“When she comes,” said Dami, “tell her that she must go to Krappenzacher and tell him that he must treat me better.”

Amrie nodded, and the children separated, each to go to the house where they had found shelter.

The fog that had been so great in the morning now came down in pouring rain. The great red umbrella of Madam Landfried moved here and there in the village, and the form that was under it could scarcely be seen. Mariann had not met her, and at coming home she said, “She can come to me—I shall not seek her again.”

The two children wandered out again, and sat[23] down together upon the threshold of their parents’ house. They waited silently, and again the thought came to them, that their parents would never return to them. Dami would count how many drops fell from the roof. But they came all too quickly, and he shouted out at once, “A thousand million.”

“She must pass here as she goes home,” said Amrie, “and we will call to her. Only cry out at the same time with me, and then she will speak to us again.”

A whip snapped in the village; they heard the quick step of a horse upon the road, and a carriage rolled by. Their friend sat within it.

“Our father and mother will come in a carriage to fetch us,” said Dami. Amrie cast a melancholy glance at her brother. “Do not chatter so,” she said. As she turned again, the wagon was close to them, and some one nodded from beneath the red umbrella. It rolled on, only Mathew’s dog barked after it, and made as though he would seize the spokes of the wheels with his teeth. At the fish-pond he turned back, barked once more, and then slipped into the house.

“Hurrah! she has gone,” cried Dami with triumph. “That was the Landfried. Did not you know Farmer Rodel’s black horse?”

“Don’t forget my leather trousers,” he shrieked[24] with all the strength of his lungs, although the wagon had already vanished in the valley, and was creeping up the little height of the Holder Meadow. The children turned back silently to the village.

Who can tell how this bitter experience struck a tiny root into the inner being of a child, and what may hereafter spring from it? Other feelings may immediately overpower the consciousness of this heavy disappointment, but the bitter root has struck into the soul.

THE day before “All Souls” Mariann said to the children, “Go and find the mountain-ash berries; to-morrow we shall want them for the churchyard.”

“I know where I can find them,” said Dami, with a truly avaricious joy, and ran out of the village with such haste that Amrie could scarcely overtake him. When she arrived at the parental house, he was already upon the tree, and signed proudly to her that she should also come up, because he knew that she could not. He plucked the red berries and threw them down into the apron of his sister. She prayed him to break off the stems with the berries, and she would weave a crown. “That I shall not,” he answered, and yet there came no berry down afterwards without a stem.

“Listen, how the sparrows scold,” cried Dami from the tree. “They are angry because I take their food from them.” When he had plucked them all, he said, “I will not go down again from[26] this tree, but will stay up here day and night, till I fall down dead. I will never go down to you, Amrie, unless you promise me something.”

“That you will never wear the present that the Landfried gave you—never, as long—as long as I can see it.”

“Not on my account?” said Amrie, and went and sat down at a little distance, behind a pile of wood, and began to weave a crown, peeping out, however, every moment, to see if Dami was coming. She placed the crown upon her head, but suddenly an inexpressible anxiety, on account of Dami, overcame her. She ran back. Dami sat upon a branch, his back against the trunk of the tree, and his arms crossed before him.

“Come down,” she said, “Oh! come down; I will promise every thing you wish.” In a second Dami was at her side, upon the ground.

They went home, and Mariann scolded the foolish children because they had made crowns from the berries which were needed at the graves of their parents. She tore the crowns apart—at the same time saying some mysterious words. Then she took both children by the hand, and led them out to the churchyard. Pointing to the two graves lying together, she said, “There are your parents!”

[27]The children looked amazed at each other. Mariann made, with a stick, a deep cross upon both the graves, and showed the children how to strew the berries therein. Dami was the more nimble, and triumphed because his red cross was ready before his sister’s. Amrie looked at him with tears, and when Dami said, “That will make father glad,” she gave him a little blow and said, “Be still!”

Dami wept, more perhaps because he had become serious. Then Amrie cried aloud, “for Heaven’s sake forgive me—oh! forgive me that I did that. Yesterday I promised, that for my whole life long I would do for you all I can, and give you all that I have. Say, Dami, that I have not hurt you. Can you not forget it? It shall never happen again as long as I live. Oh never! never again! Never! Oh, mother! Oh, father! I will be good! I promise you, Oh, mother! Oh, father!” She could say no more, but wept silently, and they say that one deep sob after another convulsed her. Then as Brown Mariann wept aloud, Amrie wept with her.

They went home, and as Dami said, “Good-night,” she whispered softly in his ear, “Now I know that we shall never see our parents again in this world!” Yet in this communication there mixed a certain childish joy, a child’s pride in knowing something, a consciousness that the parents’ lips are closed forever. When death closes the lips of one who must call thee child, a living[28] breath has vanished which can never again return.

As Mariann sat by the bed of Amrie, the child said to her, “I feel as though I were falling and falling forever! Let me have your hand.” She held her hand fast and began to slumber, but as often as Mariann withdrew her hand she caught it again. Mariann understood what that feeling of endless falling signified to the child. By the inward consciousness of the death of her parents, which she had gained to-day, they seemed to her to hover in an undefined distance,—she knew not whence, nor where. Not before midnight could Mariann leave the bed of the child, and after she had repeated her prayers, who knows how many times?

A stern scorn lay upon the countenance of the sleeping child. One hand was crossed upon her breast. Mariann took it softly away, and said, as though to herself, “If always an eye could watch over thee, and a hand help thee, as now, in thy sleep, and without thy knowledge could lift the weight from thy heart! But this can no mortal do—only He! Do thou to my child in a strange country as I do for this.”

Brown Mariann was a person whom people feared—she was so austere and crabbed in appearance. It was eighteen years since she lost her husband, who was shot as he made an attack with other companions upon the post-wagon. Mariann[29] bore child beneath her heart, when her husband’s corpse was brought into the village with his blackened face. But she suppressed her agony, and washed the black from the face of the dead, as though she could thereby wash the guilt from his soul. Her three daughters died in close succession, after the last child was born. He had become a smart little fellow, although with a strange dark face. He was now a journeyman mason, out upon his wanderings in some distant place; and his mother, who for her whole life had never been out of the village, and never had any desire to wander, often said, “That she was like a hen who had hatched one egg, but clucked always secretly at home.”

It would scarcely be believed that Mariann was one of the most cheerful persons in the village. She was never observed to be melancholy. She would not allow people to pity her, and therefore she was disliked and solitary. In winter she was the most industrious spinner in the village, and in summer the most diligent wood-gatherer, so that she was able to sell a good part of it.

“My John,”—so she called her son,—“My John,” was heard in every sentence from her lips. The little Amrie, she said, she had taken not out of compassion, but because she would have a living being near her. She was rough and cross outwardly, and to other people, and enjoyed secretly the pride of being kind, and doing right.

[30]Exactly the opposite of this was Krappenzacher, with whom Dami had found a shelter. Before the world he showed himself one of the most good-humored benefactors; in secret he ill treated his dependants and especially Dami, for whom he received but a very small compensation. His true name was Zacharia. He received his nickname because he once brought home to his wife what he called a daintily-prepared roast, of a pair of doves. They were but a pair of plucked ravens, here in the country named Krappen. Krappenzacher spent the most of his time knitting woollen stockings and jackets, and sat with his knitting-needles in any part of the village where tattling was to be had. This gossip in which he heard every thing, served him to meddle with the business of his neighbors. He was the so-called match-maker of the place. When any of his marriages were really brought about, he played the violin at the wedding. In this he was really a country amateur. He also played the clarionet and the horn, when his arm was weary with the fiddle. He was, indeed, a “Jack-of-all-trades.”

Thus were both scions, which had sprung from the same root, transplanted into very different soil. Position and culture, and the nature which they severally possessed, would lead them to very different fortunes.

ALL SOULS’ DAY, it was dark and foggy. The children were among the people collected in the churchyard. Krappenzacher had led little Dami by the hand, but Amrie had come alone without Brown Mariann. Many of the people scolded at the hard-hearted woman, and some touched upon the truth, when they said, “Mariann could gain nothing by a visit to the churchyard, for she knew not where her husband was buried.”

Amrie was quiet, and shed no tears; while Dami, through the pitying speeches of the people, wept freely, and especially because Krappenzacher secretly scolded and cuffed him.

Amrie stood a long time dreamily forgetting herself, looking fixedly at the lights at the head of the graves, how the flame consumed the wax, the wick burnt to coal, till at last the light was wholly burnt down.

Among the people, there moved around a man in a respectable city dress, with a ribbon in his button-hole. It was Severin, the Inspector of Buildings—upon[32] a journey, who had come to visit the graves of his father and mother. His sister and her family surrounded him continually with a certain reverence, and indeed the attention of every one was directed towards this respectable visitor.

Instead of answering the child, Krappenzacher hastened towards a group to say what a stupid speech the child had made. And around among the graves echoed loud laughter at such silliness.

But the wife of Farmer Rodel said, “I find it not so very foolish. If Severin wears it as an honorable distinction, it is yet strange that he should wear it in the churchyard; here where all are equal, whether in life they have been dressed in silk or fustian. It had already displeased me that he wore it in the church. We must lay aside something before we go into the church; how much more in the churchyard!”

The question of little Amrie must at length have reached the ear of Severin, for he was seen hastily to button his overcoat, and nod towards the child. He asked who she was, and scarcely had he heard the answer, than he hastened towards the children at the fresh graves, and said to Amrie, “Come, child, open thy hand. Here, I give thee a ducat; buy thyself whatever you want.”

[33]The child stared at him, and did not answer. But when Severin had turned away, she said half aloud, “I take no presents,” and threw the ducat after him. Many of the people who saw this came up to Amrie and scolded her, and were on the point of ill treating her, had not Madame Rodel, who had already protected her with words, now saved her from their rough hands. She, also, desired that Amrie should at least hasten after Severin and thank him; but Amrie was silent, and remained obstinate, so that her protectress left her. After much search, the ducat was found. The Mayor took it immediately into his possession, to give it over to the guardian of the child.

These incidents brought the little Amrie a strange reputation in the village. They said she had been only a few days with Brown Mariann, and had already acquired her manners and her character. It was unheard of, they repeated, that a child of such poverty should have so much pride; and while they reproached her whole bearing on account of this pride, it was the more apparent that this principle of independence in the young childish soul was there to protect her. Brown Mariann did all she could to strengthen this disposition. She said, “No greater good fortune can happen to the poor than that they should be called proud. It is the only safeguard; for every one would trample upon them, and then expect that they should thank them for doing it.”

[34]In the winter, Amrie was often at the fireside with Krappenzacher, listening eagerly to his violin. Yes, Krappenzacher once gave her great praise. He said, “Child, you are not stupid;” for after listening a long time Amrie had said, “It is wonderful how a fiddle can hold its breath so long. I cannot do it.” And at home in the quiet winter nights when Brown Mariann related exciting or horrible tales, or magical histories, Amrie, drawing a long breath when they were ended, would say, “Oh, Mariann, I must now take breath, for as long as you are speaking I cannot breathe; I must hold my breath.”

Was not that a sign of deep devotion to what was present, and yet a remarkable free observation of the same, and of her own relation to it?

No one took much notice of Amrie, and she was left to dream of whatever came into her mind. The school-teacher once said, in the sitting of the Parish Council, “That he had never met with such a child; that she was proud, but gentle and submissive; dreamy, and yet wide-awake; and in fact she had already, with all her childish self-forgetfulness, a feeling of self-reliance; a certain self-defence in opposition to the world, its favor and its wickedness.” Dami, on the contrary, at every little occasion, came weeping and complaining to his sister. He always had great pity for himself; and when, in the rough play of his companions, he was thrown down, he would say, “Yes, because I[35] am an orphan, they hurt me. Oh, if only my father or my mother knew it!”

Dami would take presents of food from anybody who offered them, and was therefore always eating, while Amrie was satisfied with very little, and accustomed herself to be very moderate in every thing. Even the rudest and wildest boy feared Amrie without knowing why; while Dami ran from the youngest. In the school, Dami was always uneasy, moving his hands and his feet, and the corners of his book were dog’s-eared. Amrie, on the contrary, was always neat, active, and diligent. She wept often in the school, not because she was punished, for that was very rare, but because Dami often received correction.

Amrie could please her brother best when she told him riddles. Both children sat often near the house of their rich guardian; sometimes by the wagon, sometimes by the oven at the back of the house, where they warmed themselves, especially in the autumn. And Amrie asked, “What is the best thing about the oven?”

“Then I will tell you. The best of the oven is, that it does not eat the bread that is put into its mouth;” and, pointing to the wagon before the house, she said, “What is nothing but holes, and yet holds fast?” Without waiting for the answer, she said, “That is a chain.”

[36]“Now you have given me two riddles?” said Dami. And Amrie answered, “Yes, but you give them up. See, there come the sheep; now, I know another.”

“No, you must hear this, else I take the others back;” and Dami repeated anxiously to himself, “chain,” “self-eating,” while Amrie asked, “Upon which side have the sheep the most wool?”

“Baa, baa! upon the outside,” she added, gayly singing, while Dami sprang away to tell the riddles to his comrades. When he reached them, he had forgotten all but the chain, and Rodel’s eldest boy, whom he did not ask, immediately cried out the solution. Then Dami came weeping back to his sister.

The little Amrie’s knowledge of riddles could not long remain concealed from the village; and even the rich, serious farmers, who scarcely spoke with any one, especially not with a poor child, often stopped from their work, and asked the little Amrie to give them a riddle. That she knew a great number which she might have heard from Mariann, was easy to believe, but that she could always answer new ones, excited universal wonder. She could not cross the street or the field without being stopped. She made it a rule that she would give no man the solution of her riddles, and they were ashamed at once to give them up. She knew how[37] to turn from them, so that they were banished, as it were. Yet never in a village was a poor child so much respected as the little Amrie. But as she grew to womanhood, she excited less attention; for men observe the blossom and the fruit with a sympathizing eye, but not the long ripening process from one stage to the other. Before Amrie left school, destiny gave her a riddle to guess whose solution was very difficult.

The children had an uncle who lived about seven hours’ journey from Holdenbrunn, a wood-hewer in Fluorn. They had seen him once, at the funeral of their parents; he walked behind the Mayor, who led the children by the hand. Since then the children had often dreamed of their uncle in Fluorn. They were often told that he looked like their father, and since they had given up the hope that father and mother would come back again, they were more curious to see their uncle. But as years passed, and they every year strewed the mountain-ash berries on their graves, and they had learned to read the names of their parents upon the same dark cross, they forgot the uncle in Fluorn. In all these years they had heard nothing of him. Both children were called one day into the house of their guardian. There sat a man large and tall, with a brown complexion.

“Come here, children,” cried the man, at their entrance. He had a rough, harsh voice. “Do you not know me?”

[38]The children looked at him with open eyes. Did there awake in them the recollection of their father’s voice? The man continued, “I am your father’s brother. Come here, Lisbeth! And you, also, Dami.”

“I am not Lisbeth; my name is Amrie,” said the young girl, and wept. She gave her uncle no hand; a feeling of estrangement made her tremble, because her uncle had called her by a false name. How could there be any true dependence on him, when he had forgotten her name?

“Thou art a stupid child; go immediately and give him thy hand,” ordered Farmer Rodel; then he added half aloud to the stranger, “She is a strange child; Brown Mariann has put wonderful things into her head, and you know that all is not right with her.”

Amrie looked deeply wounded, and tremblingly gave the uncle her hand. Dami had already done it, and now asked, “Uncle, have you brought us any thing?”

“I had not much to bring. I bring myself—and you will go home with me. Do you know, Amrie, it is not right that you will not know your uncle. You have no one else in the whole world. Whom have you beside? Come, think better of it; sit near me—still nearer; do you see that Dami is much more sensible? He looks more like our family—but you belong to us also.”

[39]A maid came and brought in some garments. “These are thy brother’s clothes,” said Rodel to the stranger; and turning to Amrie he said,—“Do you see, these are thy father’s clothes; we will take them, and you also, will go first to Fluorn, and then over the brook.”

Amrie touched, tenderly and tremblingly, first the coat of her father, and then his blue striped waistcoat. The uncle held the clothes up, and pointing to the worn elbows, said to Farmer Rodel,—“They are not worth much; I don’t know whether I could wear them over there in America without being laughed at.”

Amrie seized convulsively the sleeve of the coat. That they should say the dress of her father was of little value; that, which she had thought of inestimable worth; and that this dress should be worn in America, and there laughed at, confused and confounded all her ideas, especially those about America.

It was soon made clear to her, for Madame Rodel came in, and with her Brown Mariann. Madame said,—

“Listen, for once, husband; this I think must not go on so quickly. The children must not be sent in such haste with this man to America.”

“Yes indeed, but he has not till now shown that he is a relation, and I think they cannot do[40] this without leave of the Parish Council. The children have in the Parish a right of home, and they cannot take it away in their sleep; the children cannot say themselves what they will do, and that I call taking them in their sleep.”

“My Amrie is wide-awake enough. She is just thirteen, but as wise as another of thirty years,” said Mariann.

“But I also am of opinion that children should not be taken away like calves with a halter. Good! Let the man speak with them alone; afterwards, let them decide what they will do. He is their natural guardian, and has the right to take the father’s place. Listen; go with thy brother’s children a little out of the village while the women remain here—there speak to them alone.”

“If thou wouldst be our father, go home with us. There is our house,” said Dami.

“No! but Mathew has the key. He has never let us go in. I will spring before and fetch the key;” and Dami withdrew his hand and sprang before. Amrie followed, as though fettered to the hand of the uncle, who now spoke with more confidence[41] and interest. He told her as an excuse that he had an expensive family; that he and his wife with difficulty supported five children. But now, he informed her, a man who possessed large forests in America had offered him a free passage, and after the forest was felled, a good number of acres from the best land as a free possession. In gratitude to God, who had thus provided for him and his children, he had immediately thought it would be a good deed to take his brother’s children with him. He would not constrain them, and would take them only with the condition that they could look upon him as their second father.

Amrie, after these words, looked earnestly at him. If she only could make out to love this man! But she feared him, and knew not what to do. That he had fallen, as it were, out of the clouds so suddenly, and desired her love, only excited her opposition to him.

“Where then is thy wife?” asked Amrie. She might well feel that a woman had been milder and more suitable for this business.

“I will tell thee, honestly,” answered the uncle, “that my wife will have nothing to do in this affair. She says, ‘she will say nothing for nor against it.’ She is a little harsh, but only at first; and if you are amiable towards her, you are so sensible that you can wind her round your finger. If any thing should occur that you do not like,[42] think that you are with your father’s brother, and tell me alone, and I will do all I can to help you. But you will see that now you begin first to live.”

Amrie stood with tears in her eyes, and yet she could say nothing. She felt this man was wholly strange to her. His voice, like her father’s, moved her; but when she looked at him, she would willingly have fled from him.

Dami came with the key. Amrie would have taken it from him, but he would not give it up. With the peculiar pedantic conscientiousness of a child, he said he had sacredly promised Mathew’s wife that he would give the key only to his uncle. He received it, and to Amrie it appeared as though a magical secret was to open when the key, for the first time, rattled and then turned in the lock. The bolt bent back and the door opened. A peculiar tomb-like coldness breathed from the dark room that had formerly served as a kitchen. Upon the hearth lay the cold heaped ashes, and upon the door were written the first letters of “Caspar Melchior Balthes.” Underneath, the date of the death of the parents written with chalk. Amrie read it aloud. “Father wrote it,” said Dami. “Look, the 8’s are made just as you make them; such as the teacher will not suffer. Look, from right to left.” Amrie winked at him to be quiet. To her it was fearful and sinful that Dami should talk so lightly here where it seemed[43] to her like a church; yes, as though they were in eternity; quite out of the world, and yet in it. She opened the door. The little room was dark and gloomy; for the shutters were closed, and only a trembling sunbeam pressed through a crack, and fell upon an angel’s head upon the door of the stove, so that the angel appeared to laugh. Amrie, frightened, could scarcely stand, but when she looked again, her uncle had opened one of the windows, and the warm air from without pressed into the room. There was no furniture in the apartment, except a bench nailed to the wall. There had the mother spun, and there had she pressed the little hands of Amrie together, and taught her to knit.

“So, children, now we will go,” said the uncle. “There is nothing good here. Come with me to the baker’s. I will buy for both a white loaf; or would you rather have a cracknel?”

“No, no, stay a little longer,” said Amrie, always stroking the place where her mother had sat. Then pointing to a white spot on the wall she said in a low voice, “There hung our cuckoo clock, and the soldier’s reward of our father; and there is the place where the skeins of yarn hung, that our mother spun. She could spin finer than Brown Mariann. Yes, Mariann said so herself; always quicker, and more out of a pound of wool than any other; and all so even, there was not a single knot in it; and see there is the ring there upon the wall.[44] That was beautiful when she had finished a skein. If I, at that time, had been old enough, I would never have consented that they should sell my mother’s distaff; it was my inheritance. But there was nobody to care for us. Oh, dear mother! oh, dear father! if you only knew how we are thrust about, it would make you sorry even in your blessedness!”

Amrie began to weep aloud, and Dami wept with her. Even the uncle dried a tear, and pressed them to go now. It seemed to him that this unnecessary heart-rending did neither himself nor the children any good. But Amrie said decidedly, “If you go now, I will not go with you.”

Amrie was frightened. She now thought of what she had said. And indeed it might be taken as consenting; but she immediately answered,—

“No, of other things I know nothing now. I only meant that I would not go out of this house till I had seen every thing again. Come, Dami, thou art my brother. Come with me to the garret; you know where we used to play hide, behind the chimney. And then we will look out of the window where we dried the mushrooms. Don’t you remember the beautiful gold piece father received for them?”

Something shook and rolled over the ceiling. All three were frightened. But the uncle quickly[45] said, “Stay here, Dami; and you also, Amrie. Why would you go up there? Do you not hear how the mice rattle?”

“Come with me,” urged Amrie; “they will not eat us.” But Dami declared he would not go, and though Amrie was secretly afraid, she took heart and went up alone to the garret. She soon came back as pale as death, and had nothing in her hand but a basket of straw.

“Dami will go with me to America,” said the uncle, as she entered again. She was breaking up the straw in her hand. “I have nothing against it. I do not know what I shall do; but he can go alone,” she said.

“No!” cried Dami, “that I will not. Thou didst not go with Madame Landfried, when she would have thee; and so I will not go alone; but with thee!”

“Now, then, think of it; you are sensible enough to do so,” concluded the uncle, bolting again the window-shutters, so that they stood in the darkness. He pressed the children to the door, and then out of the house; locked the house door, and went to Mathew’s with the key, and then with Dami alone, into the village. He called out from a distance to Amrie, “You can have till the morning, early, to decide. Then I shall go, whether you go with me or not.”

Amrie was alone. She looked after him as he went on, and it seemed strange to her that one man[46] could go away from another, if that other belonged to him. There he goes, she thought, yet he belongs to thee, and thou to him.

Strange! as it sometimes happens in dreams that come we know not how. So it now seemed to Amrie in her waking dream. Wholly accidentally, had Dami spoken of her meeting with Madame Landfried.

The meeting had almost faded out of her recollection, and now it awoke clear and distinct as a picture from out of her past dreamed life. Amrie said, indeed, aloud to herself, “Who knows whether she also does not suddenly, she cannot say why, think of me; and perhaps now, just at this minute, for there in that spot, she promised that she would be my protector whenever I went to her. There by the willow-trees she promised. Why do the trees remain standing so that we may always see them, and why not also a word, like a tree, that stands firm so that we can hold by it, and why not by a word? Yes, it comes only from this, that they WILL; a word would be as good as a tree, and what an honorable woman said must be as firm and as true. She also wept, because she had left her home. But it was long before, that she was married from this village, and now has children. One is called John.”

Amrie stood by the mountain-ash tree, and laid her hand upon its stem and said,—

“Thou! why then dost thou not go forth? Why[47] do not men call upon thee to wander away? Perhaps it would be better for thee in another place? But thou didst not place thyself here. Who knows whether thou didst not come from another place. Stupid stuff! Yes, if he were my father I must go with him. He would not ask me. He who asks much, goes often wrong. Nobody can advise me—not even Mariann, and with our uncle it will be thus. If he does thee good, thou must pay him again. If he should be severe to me, and against Dami (because Dami is not sensible), after we have gone with him—where should we turn in that wild strange world? Here every man knows us. Every hedge, every tree, has a well-known face. Ah, ha! thou knowest me,” she said again looking up at the tree. “Oh, if thou couldst only speak! Thou wert created by God! Oh, why canst thou not speak? Thou hast known my father and my mother so well—why canst thou not tell me what they would advise? Oh, dear father! Oh, dear mother! to me it is so sad that I should go away—yet I have nothing here, and no one to care for me, and yet it would be as though I must get out of a warm bed, into the cold snow. Is that, which makes me so sorry to go, a sign that I should not go? Is it a right conscience, or is it only a foolish anxiety? Oh, dear Heaven! I know not. Oh, if only a voice from Heaven would come and tell me.”

The child trembled like a leaf, from the deepest[48] anxiety; and from this conflict of life, which now made its voice heard within her. Again she half spoke, half thought—but now more resolved.

“If I were alone I know certainly that I would not go. I would remain here. It is too hard to go; and I could, if alone, take care of myself. Ah, let me remember that! With myself I am perfectly agreed. I am one! Yes, but what a foolish thought. How can I think I am one—alone—without Dami! I am not alone. Dami belongs to me and I to him. For Dami were it better,—better for him if he were under a father who would tell him, and teach him what is right. But canst thou not care for him thyself, when it is necessary? I see plainly that if he were once at home there, he would remain there his life long, and be nothing but a servant, a dog for strange people to kick. Who knows how the children of the uncle would treat us? As they are poor people themselves, would they not play the master towards us? No, no, they are certainly good, and it would be beautiful if they would say, ‘Good-morning cousin,’ or ‘good-day, aunt.’ If our uncle had only brought one of the children with him, then I could have understood it all much better, and spoken much easier. Oh, dear! How is it all at once so difficult?”

Amrie sat down at the foot of the tree. A chaffinch came tripping about, picked up a little[49] seed here and there, looked around, and then flew away. She felt something creeping over her face. She swept it off with her hand. It was a little winged beetle. She suffered it to creep around upon her hand, between the mountains and valleys of her fingers, till it came upon the point of her finger, and flew away. “Perhaps he would tell thee where he has been,” thought Amrie. “Ah, it is well with such a little animal, wherever he flies, he is at home. And, listen! how the larks sing. It is well with them also; they need not think what they must say, and what they have to do. There drives the butcher, with his dog, a calf, out of the village. The butcher’s dog has a very different voice from the lark, but, indeed, they could not drive a calf with the song of the lark.”

“Where are you going with the foal?” cried Mathew, out of his window, to a young fellow who had a beautiful foal by a halter. “Farmer Rodel has sold it,” sounded the answer, and soon they heard the foal neigh in the valley beneath.

Amrie, as she heard this, must again think. “Yes, an animal is sold away from its mother, and the mother scarcely knows it, or who has taken it away. But they cannot sell a man; for him there is no halter. There comes Farmer Rodel with his horses, and the great foal springs after his mother. A man is not sold; he belongs to himself alone. An animal receives for his work no other reward than eating and drinking, and needs, indeed, nothing[50] else; but a man gains money as a reward for his work. Ah, yes! I can be a servant, and from my wages I can have Dami taught, and he can be a mason. But if we were with our uncle, Dami would be no longer mine as he is now. Listen! the starlings are flying home—there, above, in the house father set up for them, and they sing gayly. Father made the house out of old boards. I know now what he said, ‘that a starling would not fly into a house made of new boards.’ So it is with me!—Thou, tree, now I know! If thou shouldst rustle while I am sitting here by thee, I will remain here.”

Amrie listened breathless. Soon it seemed as though the tree rustled. She looked up at the branches, but they were motionless. She could not tell what she heard. A noisy cackling was heard on all sides; it came nearer, preceded by a cloud of dust. It was the flocks of geese driven home from the Holden Meadows. While the noise lasted, Amrie looked after them.

Her eyes closed. She was slumbering. A whole spring of flowers opened within this soul, with the blossoming trees in the valley that absorbed the cooling night dew, sending their perfume over to the child, who was sleeping upon the hearth of the home she could not leave.

It had long been night when she awoke as a voice cried, “Amrie, where art thou?” She rose up, but did not answer. She looked round astonished,[51] and then at the stars, and it seemed to her that the voice came from Heaven. As it was repeated, she knew it was the voice of Mariann, and answered, “Here I am.” Now came Brown Mariann nearer and said, “Oh, it is well that I have found thee. The whole village is, as it were, gone mad! One said, ‘I have seen her in the woods;’ another, ‘I met her in the field;’ and to me it seemed as though thou hadst thrown thyself into the fish-pond. Thou needst not fear, dear child! thou needst not fly! No one can force thee to go with thy uncle!”

“Who has said that I will not go?” Suddenly a quick wind breathed through the tree, so that the branches rustled powerfully. “But certainly I will not,” said Amrie, and laid her hand upon the tree.

“Come home! a severe shower is rising, and we shall have a high wind immediately; come home,” urged Brown Mariann.

Giddily Amrie went with Mariann into the village. The night was pitch dark, and only by the sudden flashes of lightning could they see the houses which shone as in clear daylight, so that their eyes were blinded, and they stood still in the darkness when the lightning vanished. In their own village home they seemed bewildered as in a strange place, and stepped uncertain, and confusedly forwards. Bathed in perspiration they toiled forwards, and came at last under heavy[52] drops of rain to their own door-stone. A gust of wind tore open the door, as Amrie cried, “Open!” She might have thought of a fairy tale where, at an enigmatical word, an enchanted castle opened.

THE next morning when her uncle came, Amrie declared that she should remain at home. There was a strange mixture of bitterness and benevolence when her uncle said, “Indeed, thou tak’st after thy mother, who would never have any thing to do with us. But I cannot take Dami alone, even if he would go. For a long time he would do nothing but eat bread. Thou couldst have earned it.”

Amrie urged, “that for the present they would remain here in their village, and later, if her uncle remained of the same mind, she, with her brother, could go to him.”

The resolution of Amrie was somewhat shaken by the manner in which her uncle expressed his sympathy for the children, but she did not venture to say so, and only answered, “Greet your children and say to them, that it is very hard for me never to have seen my nearest relations, and as they are going over the sea, I shall probably never see them in my whole life.”

[54]Their uncle only said, “Greet Dami from me; I have no time to bid him farewell,” and he was gone.

As soon as Dami came in, and learned that he was gone, he would have run after him, as indeed Amrie was almost inclined to do, but she constrained herself again to remain. She spoke and acted as though some one had ordered every word and every motion, and yet her thoughts flew on the way that her uncle had taken. She went with her brother, hand in hand, through the village, and nodded to every one she met. She had now returned to them all. She was on the point of being torn away, and she thought they must all be as glad as herself that she did not go. But, alas! she soon remarked that they not only would have willingly parted with her, but they were angry that she did not go. Krappenzacher opened his eyes and said, “Yes, child, you have a proud spirit, and the whole village is angry with you for thrusting your fortune away with your foot. Every one says, ‘Who knows but it might have been a fortune for thee,’ and then they calculate how soon you will come upon the Parish. Do something, therefore, that you may not come upon the public alms.”

“Madame Rodel would have willingly taken you into service, but her husband would not consent.”

[55]Amrie felt, that from henceforth she must be doubly brave, that she might meet no reproach from herself or from others, and she asked again, “Do you then know of nothing that I can do?”

“Indeed you must be afraid of nothing but of begging. Have you not heard that the foolish little Fridolin yesterday killed two of the Sacristan’s geese? The goose-herd’s service is now open, and I advise you to take it.”[A]

This soon happened, and by noon of that day Amrie was driving the geese upon the Holder Green, as they called the pasture-ground upon the little height by Hungerbrook. Dami helped his sister faithfully in this work.

Brown Mariann was very much dissatisfied with this new servitude, and asserted, not without some truth, “that the odium followed a person their life long, who once held such an office. People never forget it. If you attempt any thing else they say, ‘Ah, that is the goose-herd;’ and if, even out of pity, they should take you, you will receive a poor reward, and bad treatment. They will say, ‘Ah, it is good enough for a goose-herd.’”

“That will not be so very bad,” answered Amrie; “and you have related many hundred histories where goose-herds have become queens.”

“That was in the olden time. But who knows,[56] thou art of the old world; many times it appears to me that thou art not a child. Who knows then, thou ancient soul! perhaps some miracle will happen to thee!”

This opinion, that she was not on the lowest step of the ladder of honor, but that there was something upon which she could step down, made Amrie suddenly pause. For herself she could gain nothing more at present, but she would no longer suffer Dami to herd the geese with her. He was a man, and he should be one. It might injure him if it could afterwards be said that he had formerly kept the geese. But with all her zeal she could not make it clear to him. He was angry with her. It is always so. At the point where the understanding ceases, there begins an inward obstinacy; inward imbecility passes into outward injustice, and sometimes into injurious action.

Amrie rejoiced, that Dami could be for so many days angry with her; she hoped he would learn to stand up against others and assert his own will.

Dami also received an office. He was apprenticed by his guardian as Scarecrow. He turned the rattle the whole day in the quiet garden of Rodel’s farm to scare the sparrows from the early cherries, and from the salad-beds. But this, which in the beginning was only play, he soon gave up.

[57]It was a pleasant, but also a troublesome office, that Amrie had undertaken. It was especially often painful that she could do nothing to attach the animals to her. Indeed, they were scarcely to be distinguished, one from another; and was it not true what Brown Mariann had once said to her as she came out of the Moosbrunnenwood?

“I think,” added Amrie, “that geese on this account are stupid; that they can do too much. They can swim, and run, and fly, but they are neither in the water, nor on the ground, nor in the air, expert, or at home, and that makes them stupid.”

“I will stand by this,” said Mariann, “in thee is concealed an old hermit.”

In fact there formed itself in Amrie a disposition to solitary dreaminess, which was rarely interrupted by the occurrences of life. But, as through all the dreaming and observation of nature she continued industriously to knit, and to let no stitch drop; and as on the corner by the service-tree, the deepening night shadows and the refreshing strawberries were so near each other, that they appeared to sprout from the same root:—thus were the distinct representations of nature and the dreamy twilight of life near each other in the heart of the child.

Holder Green was no solitary, secluded place,[58] filled with fairy tales that the curious world only would willingly seek. In the midst, through the Holder Pasture, led a field-path, to Endringen, and not far from it stood the different colored boundary pillars, with the armorial bearings of the two gentlemen proprietors whose lands joined each other. Peasants passed through with every species of agricultural implements; men, women and girls went by with hatchets, sickles and scythes. The bailiffs of both estates often came through, and the reflection of their rifles glittered long before and long after they passed. Amrie was always greeted by the several bailiffs when she sat by the way, and was often asked whether this one or that one had passed by, but she never betrayed any one. Perhaps this concealment was from that inward dislike that the people, and especially the village children, have for the bailiff, who is always represented as the armed enemy of the peasantry, going about to seek whom he can insnare.

Old Manz, who was employed to break stones on the road, never spoke a word to Amrie. He went sadly from one heap of stones to another, and the sound of his pick was incessant as the tapping of the woodpecker, or the shrill chirp of the grasshoppers in the meadows and clover-field.

Notwithstanding all these human influences, Amrie was often borne into the kingdom of dreams. Freely soared her childish soul upwards and cradled itself in unlimited ether. As the[59] larks in the air sang and rejoiced without knowing the limits of their field, so would she soar away beyond the boundaries of the whole country. The soul of the child knew nothing of the limits placed upon the narrow life of reality. Whoever is accustomed to wonder, will find a miracle in every day.

“Listen,” she would say; “the cuckoo calls! This is the living echo of the woods which calls and answers itself. The bird sits over there in the service-tree. If you look up, he will fly away. How loud he calls, and how unceasingly! That little bird has a stronger voice than a man! Place thyself upon the tree and imitate him,—thou wilt not be heard as far as this bird, who is no larger than my hand. Listen! Perhaps he is an enchanted prince, and suddenly he may begin to speak to thee. Yes,” she said, “only tell me thy riddle, and let me think a little, and I will soon find the meaning of it; and then I will disenchant thee, and we will go into thy golden castle and take Mariann and Dami with us, and Dami shall marry the princess, thy sister, and we will then seek Mariann’s John through the whole world, and whoever finds him shall conquer thy kingdom. Ah! were it then all true? And why could I think it all out if it were not true?”

While the thoughts of Amrie thus soared beyond all limits, the geese also felt themselves at liberty to stray and enjoy the good things of the neighboring[60] clover or barley field. Awaking out of her dreams, she had heavy trouble to bring the geese back; and, when these freebooters came in regiments, they had much to tell of the promised land where they had fed so well. To their gossiping and chattering there seemed no end. Here and there was heard an old goose holding on, after all the others had ceased, with a drowsy or significant word, while others stuck their bills beneath their wings, and continued to dream of the goodly land.

Again Amrie soared, “Look! there fly the birds. No bird in the air goes astray; even the swallows, in their continually crossing flight, are always safe, always free! Oh! could we only fly! How must the world look above where the larks soar. Hurrah! always higher and higher, farther and farther! Oh, could I fly! I would fly into the wide world and to the Landfried, and see what she does, and ask her whether she ever thinks of me.

Thus she sang herself suddenly away from all the noise and from all her thoughts. Her breath, which by the thought of flight had become deeper and quicker, as though she really hovered in the higher ether, became again calm and measured.

But not always glowed her cheek in waking dreams; not always did the sun shine clear in the open flowers and in the bending grain. In the spring came those cold, wet days, in which the[61] blossoming trees stood like trembling foreigners, and all day long the sun scarcely beamed upon them. A sterile frost pierced through the natural world, interrupted only by gusts of wind that tore and scattered the blossoms from the trees. The larks alone kept jubilee, high in the air, above the clouds; and the finches’ little complaining note was heard from the wild pear-tree, against which Amrie leant. Now, in white stripes, rattled down the hail, and the geese pointed their beaks upwards, that the tender brain might not be hurt. There above, behind Endringen, it is already clear, and the sun will soon break through the clouds and the hills; the woods and the fields will look like the human countenance, which has been bathed in the tears of grief, but now shines out with beams of joy. The geese, which through the shower had pressed close together, and turned their bills upward, now venture to spread themselves apart and graze, and gaggle of the passing storm to the young, tender, downy brood, who have never before lived through such an experience.

Immediately after Amrie had been overtaken by the hail-storm, she endeavored to provide for the future. She took with her, out upon the green pasture, an empty corn-sack, which she had inherited from her father. Two axes, crossed with the name of her father, were painted upon it. When the showers came down, she covered and folded herself within it, and looked out from a protecting[62] roof upon the wild conflict in the sky. A cold shower of snow would end in melancholy, which would sometimes overpower her. Then she would weep over the destiny which left her so alone—deprived of father and mother—thrust out, as it were, from her fellows. But she early gained a power that trial and difficulty teaches one to exert, to swallow down her tears. This makes the eyes sparkle, and to be doubly clear in the midst of all trouble.

Amrie could conquer her melancholy, especially when she recollected a proverb of Brown Mariann’s. “Who will not have his hands frozen in the cold, must double his fist.” Amrie did so, both spiritually and physically. She looked proudly into the world, and soon cheerfulness came over her face. She rejoiced at the beautiful lightning, and held her breath till the thunder followed after. The geese pressed close together, and looked strangely at the lightning.

“They,” said Amrie, “experience only good. All the clothing they need grows upon their bodies; and for that which is pulled out in the spring, other is already provided. When the shower is over, there is joy in the air and in the trees, and the geese rejoice in the rare luxuries it has left, pressing upon each other, greedily consume the snails and the young frogs that venture forth after it is over.”

Of the thousand-fold meanings that lived in Amrie’s[63] soul, Brown Mariann received only, at times, the intimation. Once, when she came from the forest with her load of wood, and imprisoned in her sack May-bugs and worms for Amrie’s geese, the latter said to her,—

“Yes; I have remarked every thing that grows must move about. The bird flies, the beetle creeps; the hare, the stag, the horse, and all animals, must run. The fish swim, and frogs also. But there stand the trees, the corn, and the grass; they cannot go forth, and yet they must grow. Then comes the wind and says, ‘Only remain standing, and I will do for you what others can do for themselves. See, how I turn, and shake, and bend you. Be glad that I come; I do thee good, even if I make thee weary.’”

The quail began already to be heard in the high rye-fields; near Amrie, the field-larks sang the whole day incessantly. They wandered here and there, and sang so tenderly, so into the deepest heart, it seemed as though they drew their inspiration from the source of life—from the soul itself.[64] The tone was more beautiful than that of the skylark, which soars high in the air. Often one of the birds came so near to Amrie, that she said, “Why cannot I tell thee that I will not hurt thee? Only stay!” But the bird was timid, and removed farther off. Then Amrie considered quickly, and said, “It is well that the birds are timid, else we could not drive away the thievish starlings.”

At noon, when Mariann came to her, she said, “Could I only know what a bird, all through the live-long day, has to say; and, even then, he has not sung it all out.”

Mariann answered, “Look, an animal can keep nothing back to reflect upon and resolve it in himself. But in man something is always speaking; it does not cease, although it is never loud. There are thoughts that sing, weep, and speak, but quietly; we scarcely hear them ourselves. Not so the bird—when he ceases singing, he is ready to eat or sleep.”

As Mariann turned and went forth with her bundle of wood, Amrie looked smiling after her. “There goes a great singing bird,” she thought. None but the sun saw how long the child continued to smile and to think.

[65]Thus, day after day, Amrie lived. Long she sat dreaming, as the wind moved the shadows of the branches around her. Then she gazed at the motionless banks of clouds on the horizon, or upon the flying clouds that chased each other through the sky. As without, in the wide space, so in the soul of the child the cloud-pictures arose and melted away, receiving, for the moment only, existence and form. Who can tell how the soul of the child interpreted and gave life to the cloud, within or without?

When spring breaks over the earth, thou canst not comprehend the thousand-fold seeds and sprouts spread over the ground—the singing and jubilee upon the branches and in the air. A single lark seizes upon eye and ear. It soars aloft. For a time thou canst follow it as it spreads its wings; for a time thou canst not determine whether that dark point is thy vanishing lark. Now it is gone from thy eye, and soon from thy ear; for thou canst not tell if the singing thou hearest comes from thy vanished lark. Couldst thou listen for a whole day to a single lark in the whole wide heaven, thou wouldst hear that the morning, the mid-day, and the evening song, are wholly different; and couldst thou trace it from its first trembling pipe, through the whole year, thou wouldst find what various tones mingle in its spring, its summer, and its harvest song. Over the first stubble-field sing a new brood of larks.

When the spring breaks in a human soul,—when the whole world opens before it and within it,—thou canst not understand the thousand voices that make themselves heard. Thou canst[66] not seize nor hold the thousand buds and blossoms that perpetually unfold and extend themselves; thou only knowest that there it sings, and that it expands.

How quietly spring appeared again in the firmly rooted plant. There, by the meadow-hedge and the pear-tree, the sloe blossomed early, and was only rarely ripe. What a beautiful bloom has the whortleberry, and what a powerful perfume it has! The little pears are quite formed, and glow with a faint red; and the poisonous night-shade already looks dark. Soon will come those clear, sharp-cut, harvest days, when the atmosphere is of so clear and cloudless a blue, that during the whole day the half-moon can be seen in the sky; then we mark how it fills itself, and how it wanes, till only a finely-cut side, like a little cloud, stands in the horizon. In nature, and in the human soul, there is a pause before the goal is reached.

There was soon life upon the road that led through the Holder Green. Quickly rattling went the empty peasants’ wagons, where sat women and children, and laughed,—shaken by laughing as well as by the rolling of the wagons. Then they came, sheaf-laden, slowly back, creaking homewards. Reapers, both men and women, passed very near Amrie.

She gained of the rich harvest only what her geese, who boldly followed the laden wagons, robbed from their hanging sheaves.

[67]There often comes into men’s souls, with all their joy over the harvested fields and the harvest blessing, a certain timidity. Expectation has become certainty; and where all was so moving and transitory, it is now quiet. The season has changed. Summer has turned to frost.

The brooks upon Holder Green, in whose flood the geese contentedly struggled, had the best water in the place. The passer-by often paused at the broad channel to drink, while their animals ran before. Then, rinsing their mouths, they ran, shrieking after them. Others, returning from the fields, watered their beasts here.

Amrie gained the favor of many through a little earthern cup which she had begged from Mariann. Often, when the passers came to the brook, Amrie offered her cup, saying, “You can drink better with this.” Upon the return of the cup rested many friendly glances, sometimes a longer, sometimes a shorter time upon her. This did her so much good, that she was almost vexed if any one went over without drinking. She would stand by the brook with her cup full, running over; and, if these signs failed, she surprised her geese with an unlooked for bath. One day there came a Berner chaise with two stately white horses. A broad, Oberland farmer completely filled the double seat. He drew up and asked, “Girl! hast thou nothing to drink with?”

“Indeed I have—all ready.” Trembling, Amrie brought her cup full of water.

[68]“Ah,” said the Oberlander, after he had taken a good draught, and with dripping mouth half in the cup, half out, “in the whole world there is no such water as that.”

He began again, and winked to Amrie that she should be quiet, for he had but just begun; and it was particularly disagreeable to speak while one was drinking. The child seemed to understand this; and, after he had given back the cup, she said, “Yes, the water is good and healthy. If your horses would drink, it is for them, especially, good.”

“My horses are warm, and need not drink at present. Are you of Holderbrunnen, maiden?”

“I knew him well. It was hard that he must die so early. Wait, child, I will give you something.” He drew a great leather purse from his pocket, and felt a long time within it, and said at last,

[69]“Take it. Of me you can certainly take something. Is not Farmer Rodel your guardian?”

“He should have known better than to make you a goose-herd. God bless thee!”

The carriage rolled on, and Amrie held the money in her hand. “‘Of me you can certainly take something!’ Who, then, is the man who said that, and why did he not make himself known? Eh! This is a groschen. There is the bird upon it. Well, it will not make him poor, nor me rich.”

The whole day long, Amrie did not offer her cup to a single passenger. She felt a secret timidity lest she should have another present.

When she came home in the evening, Mariann told her that Farmer Rodel had sent to say she was to go to him immediately. She hastened to his house. Rodel said, as she entered,

“That is nothing to me! Tell me instantly, honestly, and truly, did I persuade you to be goose-herd? If you do not give it up this very day, I am no longer your guardian. I will not be slandered!”

[70]“I shall inform everybody that it is not your fault,” said Amrie; “but to give the service up, that I cannot. Till the summer is over I must remain in it. I must finish what I have engaged to do.”

The farmer’s wife, who lay sick in bed, cried out to her, “Thou art right. Remain only so, and I prophesy that you will do well. A hundred years hence they will say of one who is fortunate in this village, ‘This is like Brosis’ Severin and the Josenhans.’ Amrie, take courage! thy dry bread will yet fall into a honey cup!”

The sick woman was thought crack-brained; and, from fear of madness, Amrie, without answering, hastened away.

She soon imparted to Mariann that a wonderful thing had happened to her. The Esquire Landfried, of whose wife she thought so often, had spoken with her, had said something of her to Rodel, and had made her a present. She showed her the money.

Mariann cried, laughing, “Ah, that I could have guessed. That is like the Landfried! That is noble! to give the poor child a false groschen!”

“He would have given me the other half,” said[71] Amrie, gravely. And now for the first time she showed an inward opposition towards Mariann. The latter rejoiced at every thing wicked that she heard of people. Amrie, on the contrary, ascribed every thing to good motives. She was always happy. She forgot all realities in the happy dreams of her solitude. She expected nothing from others. She was therefore surprised if she received any thing, and was always thankful for the slightest favor.

“He has given me only half a kreutzer; that is enough, and I am satisfied.” She repeated this proudly to herself, while she ate her solitary supper, as though she were yet speaking to Mariann, who was not in the house, but meantime milked her goat.

In the night, she stitched the coin between two pieces of cloth, and hung it as an amulet around her neck, and concealed it on her breast. It seemed as though the impression of the bird upon the money waked the bird in the heart upon which it rested. Full of inward joy, she sang and hummed her songs all day from morning till evening; and thus she thought always again of Farmer Landfried’s lady. She had now seen both, and had of both a memento, and it seemed to her as though they left her only for a short time there; and that the Berner chaise, with the two white horses, would come again,—the farmer’s people sitting within,—and bring her away. And they would[72] say, “Thou art our child;” for certainly the Landfried would relate at home how he had met her.

With penetrating glances she looked into the autumn sky,—it was so clear, so cloudless,—and then upon the earth, where the meadows were yet green; and the hemp, lying in rows, spread out to dry, appeared like a fine net upon the ground, the autumn flowers looking up between,—the ravens flying above, their black wing feathers glistening in the bright sunshine. No wind blew; all was calm. The cows ruminated upon the stubble-fields; cracking of whips and songs echoed from all the meadows; and the pear-tree shivered its branches together, and shook down its leaves; autumn was there.

When at evening Amrie went home, she looked askingly in Mariann’s face; she thought it must tell her that the Landfried had sent to fetch her. With a heavy heart, she drove her geese to the stubble-field that was so far away from the road that led to the Holder Green, where she longed to return. But the hedges were already leafless. The larks, in their heavy downward flight, scarcely twittered a single note,—and yet there came no message; and Amrie felt as timid, in prospect of the winter, as she would have been before a prison. She consoled herself a little with the reward she received, which was especially rich. Not one of her fledglings had fallen—not one was lamed. Mariann not only sold the feathers that Amrie had[73] collected, at a good price, but advised her not to follow the old custom,—which, at the time her salary was paid, for every goose that had been herded, to give a piece of church-consecrated cake. Mariann advised her to exchange the cake for good, sound bread. Thus they had bread the winter through, of very old baking indeed; but, as Mariann said, “Amrie’s teeth were as sound and white as those of a mouse, and could nip through every thing.”

Throughout the village, nothing was now heard but the thresher’s flail, and Amrie said, “The whole summer long, the corn in the ear heard only the song of the lark; now, men bruise its head with the flail, and how different is the sound!”

“An old hermit’s soul is concealed within thee,” was the final sentence of Brown Mariann.

A WOMAN who led a solitary, reserved life,—who cooked and ate her food alone,—was called her own cook,—Eigenbrätlerin,—and to such an one was given all sorts of peculiarities. No one ever had more right, or more inclination, to be her own cook, than Brown Mariann, although she never had any thing to cook, except oat porridge and potatoes. Potatoes and oat porridge were her only food. She lived always retired within herself, and conversed willingly with no one. Towards harvest only was she full of excited restlessness. At this time she was heard talking with herself, and also speaking to all the men, especially strangers, who went through the village. She inquired of them whether the masons from here and there had returned home to their winter rest, and whether they had said any thing of her John. When the linen which she had been bleaching through the summer was finally ready to wash, she remained up the whole night, and was heard to murmur to herself. Nothing was understood,[75] except when she divided the webs she was heard to say, “That is for thee, and this is for me.” She said, daily, twelve pater-nosters for John; but, on washing-night, they were innumerable. When the first snow fell, she was wonderfully cheerful. “Now, when there is no more work; now, he will certainly come home.”

At this time she told her old white hen, which she kept in a coop, that she must die, for John was coming home.

Thus she had been for many years. The villagers represented to her that it was foolish always to be thinking of John’s return. But she did not change, and was only every year more ungracious to the people.

It was eighteen years, this autumn, since John left her. Every year there was a notice written in the newspaper to “John Michael Winkler” to return, even should it be in his fiftieth year. He was now six and thirty.

The report went about the village, that John had joined the gypsies, and his mother kept a young gypsy with her, who looked strikingly like the lost John; he had the same dark face, and was not unwilling to be regarded as her son. The mother placed a proof before him. She had yet in her possession the hymn-book and the confirmation certificate of her son. She tried them in this manner: one who did not know who had been his god-father, or remember the day when Brosis’ Severin,[76] with the English woman, arrived; and later, when the new town-house fountain was opened, and other remarkable things, must be false. Yet Mariann sheltered the young gypsy, whenever he came to the village; and the children in the street shrieked after him, “John! John!”

Every year the schoolmaster sent a letter to Mariann, written to John, which she laid in the hymn-book, not knowing where to send it. It was well that she knew not how to read, for this year he sent her the letter of another, instead of the one desired. For now a strange report was murmured through the whole village. Where two met together they spoke of it, and whispered, “Say nothing to Mariann. It would kill her! it would make her insane!”

It was, namely, information that the Ambassador in Paris had received and imparted through all the higher and lower officers, till the news reached the village, “That John Winkler, of Holdenbrunn, had fallen, fighting at one of the outposts in Algiers.”

It was talked of in the village, and every one said how strange that so many high officers should trouble themselves about the dead John; and concluded that so certain a stream of information must be true. In the sitting of the council, it was resolved to say nothing to Brown Mariann. It was unjust to imbitter the few years she had to live, by taking from her her last consolation.

[77]But, instead of keeping the information secret, the Mayor hastened to tattle it out at home, and the whole village, all but Mariann, were soon in possession of the news. Every one observed her with strange glances—they were afraid they should betray themselves—they scarcely returned her greetings.

It would have been better if Amrie also had known nothing; but there lay a peculiarly seducing charm in coming as near as possible to the forbidden subject, and of course everybody spoke with Amrie of the melancholy occurrence, warned her to say nothing of it to Mariann, and asked “whether the mother had had no warning, no dream? Were there no strange voices in the house?”

Amrie was full of secret trembling and fear. She alone was near Mariann, and knew something that she must conceal from her. The people, also, of whom she hired a small apartment, kept themselves out of her neighborhood, and signified their compassion by giving her warning to quit.

How strangely in life things are connected together. Through this occurrence Amrie experienced both joy and sorrow; for the parental house was again opened to them. Mariann moved into it. Amrie, although in the beginning full of fear, accustomed herself to go in and out; and, when she had kindled the fire, and drawn the water, she believed her father and mother must come again.[78] At last she felt herself wholly at home. She spun day and night, till she earned enough to re-purchase from Mathew the cuckoo clock which had belonged to her parents. She was now too happy to possess a piece of her old domestic furniture. But the cuckoo had suffered among strangers, had lost half of his voice, and the other half remained buried in his throat. He could only say “cuck,” and as often as he did that, Amrie at first added, unconsciously, the other “coo,” but she complained of that half-tone, and especially that it was not so beautiful as in her early childhood. Then said Mariann,—

“Who knows, that if in later years we should receive again what has made us perfectly happy in childhood, I believe that, like the cuckoo clock, it would have but half its sound. If I could only teach thee, child, what cost me so much till I had learnt it—never to wish for what happened yesterday. That, can no one give. We may try to purchase it, through sweat and tears shaken together! It can be found in no apothecary’s shop. Cling to nothing, Amrie—to no man—to no cause—then canst thou fly alone!”

These speeches of Mariann were at the same time wild and timid. They came out only in the twilight, like wild animals from the forest. It was only with difficulty that Amrie accustomed herself to her misanthropy.

Mariann could not endure the half-word repeating[79] of the clock, and hung the pendulum wholly outside so that the clock merely ticked, and no longer gave out the hour. At length the ticking alone disturbed her, so that at last the poor clock was no longer wound up. She said she had always a clock in her head. It was wonderful, that although time was very indifferent to her, she always knew the hour to an exact minute. There was a singular wakefulness in her, watching and listening as she always was for news of her son, and although she visited no one, and spoke to no one, yet she knew every thing that took place in the village,—even the most secret things that occurred. She guessed every thing from the manner in which people met her, and from scattered words; and, as this appeared miraculous, she was feared and avoided. From one end of the year to the other, she ate daily some juniper-berries. It was said that was the reason she was so active, and that she would never see her sixty-sixth year, for no one would believe that even now both sixes belonged to her age. They said she milked her black goats, hours long, that gave her indeed much milk, and she willingly milked these only. She detested milk drawn from the udder of cows. It was called witchcraft that she succeeded always in rearing fowls, for where could she find food for them, and how could she always have eggs and chickens to sell? They saw her, indeed, in summer, collect May-bugs, grasshoppers, and all kinds[80] of worms; and in moonless nights she was observed darting like a will-o’-the-wisp among the graves with a resin torch, collecting the rain-worms, and talking in a low voice with herself. Yes, it was said, that in the quiet winter nights, alone by herself, she held wonderful conversations with her goat and her hens.

Amrie often trembled, in the long quiet winter nights, when she sat solitary, spinning by Mariann, and heard nothing but the half-sleeping cluck of the fowls, and the convulsive starts of the goat; for it appeared like witchcraft that Mariann spun so quickly. “Yes,” she once said, “I think my John helps me spin”—and yet she complained that this winter, for the first time, she could not always be thinking of her John. She reproached herself on this account, and said, she was a bad mother, for it seemed to her that the features of her son vanished by degrees, and as though she forgot what he had done here and there; how he smiled; how he sang and wept; how he had climbed the trees, and sprung over the hedges.

“It would be frightful,” she said, “if one could thus by degrees vanish from the mind, so that we could remember nothing rightly about them.” To Amrie it was dreadful thus perpetually to hear of one that was dead as though he yet lived. Again, Mariann complained, “It is sinful that I can no longer weep for my John. I once heard that we could weep for one that was lost as long as he[81] lived, or till he is buried. When he is beneath the ground, all weeping ceases.”

“No, that cannot be! That dare not be! My John cannot be dead! Thou darest not do that to me, Thou, there above! But no! Forgive me, good God, that I so strive against the wall! But open thou the door; open it and let my John come in! Oh, the joy!—Come, sit thou there, John! Tell me nothing! I will hear nothing! I will only know that thou art there. It is good! It is enough! The long, long years have now become a minute. What has happened to me? Where hast thou wandered? Where thou hast been I have not been—but now thou art here, and thou shalt never again leave this hand till it is cold. Oh, Amrie, my John must wait till thou art grown. I say no more. Why dost thou not speak?”

Amrie felt as though deprived of breath, her throat was dry. It seemed to her as though the dead stood there—a spectre. The secret was upon her lips. She might betray it, and the roof fall in and all be buried.

Sometimes Mariann was talkative in another manner, although all related to the one subject, the remembrance of her son. Heavily came upon Amrie the dark questions of the order of Providence.

“Why does a child die for which the mother has waited, trembling—with her whole soul has waited? I and my Dami, why are we lost children?[82] We might so gladly seize the hand of our mother, and that hand has become dust.”

These were dark and misty questions into which the thoughts of the poor solitary child were driven. She knew no other way to help herself out of the labyrinth of doubt, than to softly repeat the Multiplication Table.

On Saturday evening Mariann was willing to talk. From an ancient superstition she would not spin on Saturday evening. She always knit, and if she had any thing to relate, she wound off at first a good deal of her yarn, so as not to be interrupted, and then she went on with the thread of her story.

“Oh, child,” she always concluded, “remember this, in thee is concealed the soul of an old hermit; whoever would live a good, exact life, that person must live alone. Willingly receive of no one. Knowest thou who is rich? He who needs nothing but that which he has! And who is poor? He who wants to receive something from friends. There sits one and waits for the hands that belong to another’s body, and waits for the eyes that are in another person’s head. Remain alone by thyself; then thou hast thy own hands; thou needest no other, and canst help thyself. Hope for any thing to come to thee from another, and thou art a beggar. Only to expect any thing from fortune, from a fellow-creature, yes, even from God himself, and thou art a beggar. Thou standest with[83] outstretched hands for something to fall therein. Remain alone! that is best—then thou hast all in thyself. Alone! Oh, how good it is to be alone! Look, in the depths of the ant-hill lies a little tiny sparkling stone; whoever finds it can make himself invisible, and no one can know his appearance. But he who seeks it, must creep beneath others. There is also a secret in this world. But who can understand it? Find it. Take it to thyself. It gives thee neither fortune nor misfortune. If a man knows himself and other men aright, he can make himself any thing he pleases, but only on one condition,—he must remain alone! Alone,—alone! Otherwise, nothing will help him!”

Thus she gave Amrie dark and half-expressed meanings, which the child could not understand,—but who knows how much remains forever engraved in an attentive open soul, through words half understood? Then, often looking wildly around, she would say, “Oh, could I only be alone. But one piece of me is under the ground, and another is wandering around in the world, who knows where? Oh that I were that black goat!”

However gently she began, the conclusion of her remarks led always to regret and melancholy; and she who would be always alone, and think of and love no one, lived only by thinking of her son, and loving him passionately.

At length Amrie thought of an effectual means to save Mariann from this unhealthy desire to be[84] alone. She proposed that Dami also should be taken into the house; but Brown Mariann opposed this so violently, that Amrie threatened herself to leave her alone. She also coaxed her so lovingly, and presented the advantages so clearly, that at length Mariann yielded, and gave in.

Dami, who had learnt wool-picking from Krappenzacher, sat now in the evening in the parents’ apartment, and at night when he and his sister slept in the store-room, they called to each other when they heard Mariann flitting from room to room, or talking in her sleep. Through the removal of Dami there came fresh vexation. He was altogether dissatisfied that he must pursue this miserable work, which was only fit, he said, for cripples. He wished to be a mason, and although Amrie opposed this desire, for she feared her brother would never persevere, Mariann encouraged him in the wish. She would have had all the young fellows become masons, so as to send them into foreign countries to inquire for her John.

She rarely went to church, but she loved to have her hymn-book borrowed when others were going. It was to her a peculiar satisfaction to have her hymn-book in church, especially when a stranger apprentice who was working in the village borrowed it for that purpose. It seemed to her that her John was praying in his own church, because the words were spoken and sung out of[85] his own hymn-book, and Dami had to go twice to church every Sunday, to carry John’s hymn-book.

But although Mariann did not go to church, there was one solemnity at which she never failed to be present, whether in her own village or in the neighborhood. No funeral took place at which she was not present as a mourner; and even at the grave of a young child, she wept as violently as though she had been its mother, and yet on the way home she would be especially cheerful. This weeping appeared to be a real refreshment to her, for during the whole year she suffered so much silent sorrow, that she seemed thankful when tears came to her relief.

Were her neighbors then to be blamed for looking upon her as something unnatural, especially as they possessed a secret regarding her, upon which their lips were closed? Upon Amrie also fell a part of this avoidance, and in many houses where she offered help or sympathy, they suffered her to remark that they did not desire her presence. She did indeed display peculiarities, that appeared wonderful to all the village. She went barefoot through all except the very coldest winter. They thought she must possess some secret charm against sickness and death.

In Farmer Rodel’s house alone, was she willingly received, as he was her guardian. Dame Rodel, who had always taken her part, had promised that[86] when she was grown up, she would take her into her service. This plan could not be carried out, because death first took her friend away. While many are so happy, as to feel in later life only the bitterness of existence, when one friend after another leaves us, and their memory only remains, Amrie learnt this in her early youth, and she wept more passionately at the funeral of the farmer’s wife, than any of her children or relatives.

The farmer, indeed, complained that he must now give up the estate, and yet, neither of his three children were married. But a year had scarcely passed (it was the second that Dami had worked in the stone quarry), when a double wedding took place in the village. Farmer Rodel celebrated the marriage of his eldest daughter, and of his only son. On the same day, he gave over the estate to his son. This double marriage was the cause of a new name, and another life to Amrie.

Upon the green enclosure, before the large dancing-hall, the children were collected, and while their elders danced and waltzed within, they imitated their example. Strange, no boy or girl would ask Amrie to dance. It was not known who first said it, but they heard a voice exclaim: “Nobody will dance with you, because you are barefoot.” “Barefoot! barefoot! barefoot!” they now shrieked from all sides. Amrie stood there; the tears rushed to her eyes, but quickly exerting that[87] power by which she overcame both scorn and injury, she forced back her tears, and catching up her apron at both sides she danced by herself so gracefully and charmingly, that all the children stood still and held back. Soon the grown people nodded to each other around the door, and a circle of men and women formed themselves about Amrie, applauding her; especially Farmer Rodel, who, feeling at this time doubly excited, clapped his hands, and whistled the waltz, while the music within played louder and louder, and Amrie contrived to dance, and appeared to be insensible to weariness. At length, the music ceased, the farmer taking her by the hand said,—

“It is better to dance alone. You need wait for no one, and your partner is always with you.”

“Come in and eat,” said the proud farmer, and he placed her at the wedding-table, which continued the whole day to be served afresh. Amrie ate very little; but the farmer would have continued his amusement by making her drink wine.

“No,” she said; “if I drink, somebody must[88] lead me home; I could no longer go alone. Mariann says, ‘One’s own feet is the best carriage—it is always harnessed.’”

The young farmer came with his wife and asked her, jokingly, “if she had brought them a wedding-present? All who eat,” he said, “must bring a present.”

At this question the old farmer, with incredible generosity, secretly thrust a sixpence into the child’s hand. Amrie, nodding to the farmer, held the sixpence fast, and said to the young couple,—

“I have now the promise and the fee. Your departed mother promised that I, and no other, should be nursery-maid to her first grandchild.”

“Yes, that was always her wish,” said the old man. And now, that which, from fear of the orphan becoming a charge to them, he had denied his wife, during her life, he consented to now, when it could no longer be a pleasure to her; while he also gave himself the appearance of doing it out of regard to her memory. He did not consent from generosity, but from the well-founded expectation that the orphan would be serviceable to himself, while the charge of her remuneration would fall upon another.

[89]“Bring thy bundle to-morrow morning to our house; you can stay with us.”

“Good,” said Amrie; “to-morrow I will bring my bundle, but now may I not take a bundle away? Give me that flask of wine, and I will wrap up this fowl with it, and take it to Mariann and my Dami.”

They consented. Then the old farmer whispered to her, “Give me back my sixpence. I meant you should give it to them.”

“I take it from you as enlisting money,” said Amrie, slyly, “and you will soon see that I will quit scores with you.”

The old farmer smiled, although half angrily, and Amrie went gayly away with money, wine, and food, to poor Mariann and Dami.

The house was shut up, and presented to Amrie the greatest possible contrast between the music, noise, and feasting of the wedding-apartment, and the deserted stillness of her home. Upon her way home she knew where she could expect to find Mariann. She went, indeed, almost every evening to the stone quarry, and sat alone behind the hedge, quietly listening to the sound of the hammer and chisel. It was to her a melody out of long past time, when John had once worked here, and she had sat and listened to the sound of his pickaxe.

Amrie met Mariann just returning; and half an hour before the close of work she called Dami,[90] and there, on the rocks, by the quarry, was held a wedding-feast merrier than that within the house at the sound of the fiddles.

Dami, especially, shouted loudly. Mariann was also cheerful, but she took no wine. “Not a drop of wine,” she said, “should pass her lips till she drank it at the wedding of her John.”

As Amrie, under the influence of this cheerfulness, related that she had taken service with the young Farmer Rodel, and would enter upon it in the morning, Mariann rose in the wildest anger, and, picking up a stone, she pressed it upon her breast, and cried,—

“It were a thousand times better that I had this stone within my breast than a living heart! Why cannot I always be alone! alone! Why have I suffered myself to be persuaded to admit another to my heart? But now it is past, and forever. As I cast this stone away from me, so will I cast away, henceforth, all dependence upon any human being. Thou false, faithless child! Scarcely canst thou stretch thy wings, and thou art gone. But it is better so. I am alone, and my John shall be alone. When he comes he shall remain alone. What I would have had has come to nothing.” And she ran forth to the village.

“She is a witch,” said Dami. “I will drink no more wine. Who knows whether she has not bewitched it?”

[91]“Drink it, nevertheless,” said Amrie. “She is a strange woman, and has a heavy cross to bear. But I know how to comfort her.” Thus she consoled Dami.

FARMER RODEL’S house was once more full of life. “Barefoot,” for so they continued to call Amrie, was helpful everywhere, and soon made herself beloved by all in the family. She could tell the young wife, who was a stranger in the village, what had been the customs of the house, and taught her to conform to the peculiarities of her nearest relatives. She knew how to render little services to the old farmer, who grumbled all day, and could not forgive himself, for having so early given up the farm. She represented to him, how much better his daughter-in-law really was, than she knew how to show; and then, when scarcely at the end of a year, the first child came, Amrie showed so much joy, and so much cleverness, in every emergency, that all in the house were full of her praise; but, after the manner of people, who are always more ready to find fault, with the smallest mistake, than to give praise for goodness.

But Amrie expected nothing, and she knew so[93] well when to take the child to its grandfather, and when to take it away again, that he should have only pleasure therein. When she took it to show him its first tooth, the old farmer said,—

“I would make you a present of a sixpence, for the pleasure you have given me. But stay, the one you stole from me on the wedding-day,—now, you may honestly keep it.”

In the mean time, Mariann was not forgotten, although it was very difficult to soften, and bring her round again. She said she would have nothing more to do with Barefoot, whose new master would not allow her to continue the intercourse with Mariann, especially to take the child there, fearing, as they said, “that the witch might do him an injury.” It needed great skill and patience, to overcome this aversion. But at last, it succeeded. Yes, little Barefoot knew how to bring it about, so that at last, Farmer Rodel visited Mariann many times. This was looked upon as a real miracle by the whole village. The visits were soon again stopped, for Mariann on one occasion said,—

“I am now near seventy years old, and have done very well, without the friendship of any great farmer. It is not worth while for me to change now.”

Dami also wished, very naturally, to be often with his sister; but this the young farmer would not suffer, for he said, not without justice,—

“That he should have to feed this big, growing[94] youth. In such a house, he could not prevent the servants from sometimes giving him something to eat.” He also forbade his coming on Sunday afternoons to visit his sister. Dami had, in the mean time, anticipated the comfort of being in so well-stored a home, and his mouth watered to be there, if only as a servant. The stone-mason’s was a hungry life. Barefoot had much to overcome. “He must remember,” she said, “that this was his second craft, and that he must persevere; it was a mistake to think he would gain any thing by changing. If good fortune came, it would come where he was, or not at all.” Dami was for a time silenced, and so great was the influence of Amrie, and so natural the care she took of her brother, that he was always called, “Little Barefoot’s Dami,” as though he were her son, rather than her brother, although a whole head taller than his sister. Meantime, he did not appear to be subject to her. Indeed, he often fretted about it, that he was not esteemed as much as his sister, because he had not her tongue. This dissatisfaction with himself and his position, was always poured out first upon Amrie. She bore it patiently, and while he, outwardly and ostentatiously, showed that she must submit to him, she evidently gained still more respect and consideration. Every one said, “how good it was of Barefoot to do so much for her brother, and to put up with his bad treatment, while she worked for him as a mother would for[95] her child.” In fact, she washed and sewed for him during the night, so that he was always the neatest-dressed boy in the village. The two pairs of welted shoes that she received every half-year, as a part of her wages, she exchanged with the shoemaker for a pair for Dami, and went barefoot herself. On Sunday, only, was she seen going to church with shoes. Barefoot was much grieved that Dami had become, they knew not how, the common centre for all the jokes and ridicule of the village. She blamed him severely, and told him he should not suffer it. But, he answered, “she might prevent it, he could not.” This was impossible, and it did not seriously displease Dami to be so treated. It wounded him, sometimes, when all in the village laughed at him, and those younger than himself took liberties with him, but it vexed him much more not to be noticed by any one, and this led him to make a fool of himself, and expose himself to perpetual ridicule.

With Barefoot, on the contrary, the danger was that she would become the Hermit that Mariann had always predicted she would be. She had once a solitary playmate and confidante, the daughter of Mathew the coal-burner; but this girl had for some years worked in a factory in Alsatia, and nothing more was heard of her. Barefoot lived so much within herself, that she was not reckoned among the young people of the village. She was friendly and talkative with those of her own age, but Brown[96] Mariann was her only confidante. Thus because Amrie lived so apart from others, she had no influence upon the relation which Dami held to others, who, however much he was joked and laughed at, must always cling to companions, and could never bear to be alone like his sister.

At this time, Dami suddenly made himself quite free, and one pleasant Sunday showed his sister the earnest money he had received. He had hired himself as farm-servant to Scheckennarr of Hirlingen.

“Had you told me,” said Barefoot, “I had found a better service for you. I would have given you a letter to Farmer Landfried’s wife, of Allgäu, and they would have treated you like a son of the house.”

“Oh! say nothing about that,” said Dami. “It is now nearly thirteen years that she has owed me a pair of leather breeches she promised me. Don’t you recollect it,—when we were little, and thought if we knocked, father and mother would open the door? Do not speak of the farmer’s wife,—who knows whether reminded with a word, she would remember us? Who knows whether she is alive?”

“Yes, she lives yet. She is a relation of our family, and is often mentioned there. She has married all her children, except one son, who will have the farm.”

“Now, you would disgust me with my new service,” complained Dami, “and tell me I could[97] have had a better. Is that right?” His voice trembled.

“Oh! do not be so tender-hearted,” said Barefoot. “What have I said against your good fortune? You remind me of the time when the geese bit you. I will only say, keep to that which thou hast, and take care that you remain in one place. It will not do to be like the cuckoo, and sleep every night upon a different tree. I could have another place. But I will not change. I have succeeded in making this one comfortable. Look,—he who is every minute changing, is treated like a stranger. They do not make him a home, because they know that to-morrow morning he will be gone.”

“I do not need your sermons,” said Dami, turning angrily away. “To me you are always harsh, but to all the rest of the world gentle.”

“Because you are my brother,” said Amrie laughing; and now she coaxed the obstinate boy.

There was, indeed, a strange difference between the brother and sister. Dami was sometimes humble as a beggar, and then suddenly proud, while Barefoot, though always good-natured and obliging, was sustained by an inward pride, that with all her readiness to serve, she never laid aside.

“Look, something has just occurred to me; but you must first promise to be good, for upon a bad[98] heart that coat must not lie. Farmer Rodel has yet the clothes of our father. You are so large, that they will just suit, and give you a respectable appearance when you enter the farm-yard with the other servants; they will see that you have had honest parents.”

Dami was consoled, and in spite of many obstacles, for old Rodel would not at first give up the clothes, Barefoot brought him at length to comply. Then she took Dami into her own chamber, where he must immediately put on the coat and waistcoat. He struggled against it, but what she had once decided upon must be done! The hat only, he would not have, but when the coat was on, she laid her hand upon his shoulder and said,—

“So, now thou art my brother and my father—and now the coat goes, as at first, over the field; but there is a new man within it. See, Dami! Thou hast the noblest Sunday dress in the world. Hold it in honor. Be therein as honest as was our blessed father!”

She could say no more, but laying her head upon the shoulder of her brother, her tears fell upon the newly recovered dress of the father.

“You say that I am tender-hearted,” complained Dami—“but you are far more so.”

In fact, Barefoot was quickly and deeply affected by every thing; her heart was of the tenderest emotion, but she was at the same time strong, and[99] light-hearted as a child. She was, as Mariann had remarked at her first sleeping under the roof, of the quickest sensibility. Waking and sleeping, laughing and weeping, went hand in hand. Every experience and every emotion was deeply felt, but it was quickly over; and she was herself again.

“You give me a heavy heart,” whimpered Dami, “and it was heavy enough before, that I must go to find a home among strangers. You should have cheered me—instead of so——so——”

“Honest thinking is the best cheering,” said Barefoot—“that does not make one sad. But you are right. You have enough to bear, and a single pound laid upon a heavy load may break one down. I have been stupid; but come, I will see what the sun has to say, when the father stands again before it. No, that was not what I meant to say. Come—now you shall know where we must go to take leave. If you were only going a very short distance, you must still go to this place to take leave. I am also sad enough, that I shall have you no longer with me. No—I mean that I shall be no longer with you. I would not govern you as people say. Yes, yes! old Mariann is right. Alone is a terrible word. We do not at first learn its full meaning. So long as you were there, across the street,—even if I was a whole week without seeing you,—what did that matter? I could see you at any moment, and that[100] was as well as though we had been together,—but now? Ah! well; you will not be out of the world. But I pray thee take care of thyself. Do not come to any harm. And if you tear your clothes, send them to me; I will still sew and mend for you. Now come,—now we will go to the—to the churchyard!”

Dami opposed this, and again, with the excuse that he was sad enough already, and that it would only make him worse, Barefoot yielded this point also. He took off his father’s clothes, and she packed them in the sack that she had once worn as a mantle when she took care of the geese, and upon which remained the name of her father. She charged Dami to send it back to her by the first opportunity.

The brother and sister walked on together, till a Hirlingen wagon came through the village. Dami hailed it, and packed his bundle upon it. Then he went hand in hand with his sister out of the village, while Barefoot sought to cheer him.

[101]“It is your own wish. You can also be merry if you do right.” She went with her brother, till she came to Holder Common. There, by the wild pear-tree, she said,—

They shook hands heartily. Then Dami went on to Hirlingen, and Barefoot turned back to the village. Not till she got to the foot of the hill, where Dami could not see her, did she venture to raise her apron to her eyes, to dry the tears that rolled down her cheeks. Then she cried aloud, “God forgive me for saying what I did, about being alone. I thank thee, O God! that thou hast given me a brother. Leave him only to me as long as I live!”

As she came into the village, how empty it seemed to her, and in the twilight when she rocked the Rodel children to sleep, she could not bring a single song to her lips, although she usually sang like the lark. She could not help thinking, “Where now is my brother; what are they saying to him; how do they receive him;” and yet she could not imagine how it was. She would have hastened after him to tell them all how good he was, and that they must be good to him. Then she consoled herself with thinking that no one could entirely, and at all times, protect another, and she hoped it would be good for Dami to have to take care of himself.

[102]It was already night. She went into her chamber, bathed herself anew, braided her hair, and dressed herself freshly, as though it were morning, and with this extraordinary renewing of the day, it seemed as though she began a fresh morning.

When all in the house were asleep, she went over to Mariann, and sat long hours by her bed, in the dark room. They talked to each other of the feeling of having one away in the wide world, who was yet a part of one’s self. Not till Mariann was asleep did Barefoot slip away. But first she took the pail, and brought water for the old woman, and laid the wood in order upon the hearth, so that in the morning she would only need to kindle the fire. Then she went home.

What is that generosity which consists in spending money? It is a power given into our hands to be again diffused, and afterwards abdicated. It is far otherwise with that original faculty which is a part of ourselves. To part with this, is to give a part of our life, and perhaps a part of all that remains to us. The hours of rest, and the freedom of Sunday, were all that Barefoot could call her own, and these she sacrificed to Mariann. She permitted herself to be blamed and scolded if any thing crossed the old woman’s peculiarities, never allowing herself to think or to say,—

“How can you scold me when I give you all I possess?” Indeed she was not conscious that she was making a sacrifice, only on Sunday evenings,[103] when she sat in the solitude before the house, and heard for the thousandth time, “What a brave young fellow John had been on Sunday;” and when the young men and girls of the village went by singing all manner of songs, then would she become aware that she was sacrificing her own amusement, and she would sing softly to herself the songs the others were singing in earnest. But when she looked at Mariann she was silent, and thought to herself that it was well Dami was not in the village. He was no longer the butt of their scorn, and when he returned he would certainly be a young fellow whom all would respect.

On winter evenings, when, at Farmer Rodel’s, there was spinning and singing, Barefoot would venture to sing with them, and although she had a clear, high voice, she always took the second part. Rose, the farmer’s unmarried sister, who was a year older than Barefoot, sang always the first part, and it was understood, as a matter of course, that Barefoot’s voice must help hers. Rose was a proud, imperious person, who looked upon and treated Amrie almost like a beast of burden, but less before people than in secret; and as, in the whole village, Amrie was considered of the greatest service,—the person who kept every thing in the farmer’s establishment in complete order,—it was the principal concern of Rose to glorify herself by telling people how much patience was necessary to get along with Barefoot; how[104] the goose-girl in every thing imitated her; and how she bore with her merely out of compassion, and that she might not expose herself to others.

One great object of banter, and of not always well-chosen jokes, was Barefoot’s shoes. She continued to go barefoot, or in winter only she wore low-cut peasant’s boots; yet she took every half-year the customary addition to her wages, of two pairs of welted shoes. They stood upon a shelf in her chamber, while Amrie bore herself as proudly as though she wore them all at the same time. Her shoes numbered six pairs, since Dami left her. They were filled with straw, and from time to time oiled to keep them soft.

Barefoot was now completely grown up; not very tall, but well-proportioned, strong, and active. She always dressed herself in poor materials, but neatly and gracefully, for taste is the ornament of poverty, that costs nothing, and that cannot be purchased. But as Farmer Rodel held it for the honor of his family, he insisted, on Sundays, that she should put on a better dress to be seen by the village. After church, Amrie quickly changed it again, and went to sit with Mariann in her every-day working-dress, or she stood over her flowers, which she cherished in pots at her garret-window, where pinks and the Rose Mariè flourished admirably. Although she had taken from them many grafts to plant upon the graves of her parents, they always doubled their growth afterwards.[105] The pinks, indeed, hung down in pretty spiral tufts to the arbor-walk that went round the whole house. The wide, inclined, straw-roof of the house, formed an excellent protection for the flowers. Barefoot never failed, when a warm summer shower fell, to carry her flower-pots into the garden and leave them near the rain-softened, motherly earth; in particular a little Rose Mariè, that grew in an extremely graceful manner, like a little tree. Barefoot would close her right hand, and strike the palm of the other hand over it, and say to herself,—“when the wedding of my nearest friend comes,—yes, when my Dami is married, then I will lay thee out.” Another thought, one at which she would have blushed in her sleep, sent the red blood to her cheeks as she bent over the Rose Mariè. She drew in her breath as though there met her a faint perfume from the future. But she would not suffer the thought to dwell a moment; wildly and hastily thrusting the rose behind the other larger plants, so that she could not see it, she closed the window.

An alarm-bell sounded! “Fire! at Schecken’s in Hirlingen!” they soon cried. The fire-engine was drawn out, and Barefoot went upon it, and the firemen following.

“My Dami! my Dami!” she cried inwardly, all the way; but it was day, and people are not burnt in the day-time. And, in fact, as they reached Hirlingen, the house was already burnt to the ground.[106] At some distance from the house stood Dami, in an orchard, fastening two beautiful well-formed horses to a tree; while all around were collected horses, oxen, cows, and heifers.

Barefoot got down, exclaiming, “Thank God, thou art safe.” She ran to her brother, but he would not speak to her, and with both hands laid upon the neck of the horse, he concealed his face.

“All my things are burnt; my clothes and the little money I had saved. I have nothing now but the clothes I have on.”

“Were they fire-proof?” asked Dami angrily. “How can you ask such foolish questions?”

Barefoot could scarcely help weeping at her brother’s unkindness, but she felt quickly that misfortunes naturally make one harsh and bitter, and she merely said,—

“Well, thank God that your life is spared. The loss of our father’s clothes can never be repaired, but they would at length have been worn out—then, so—or so—” and she wept.

“All thy tattle is a cat’s-paw,” said Dami, and kept stroking the horses. “Here I stand as God made me. If the horses could speak, they would tell a different story. But I was born to[107] ill luck, however well I do, it is of no use, and yet—” He could say no more—his voice failed him.

“The horses, cows, and oxen—yes, all, not a hoof of them has been burnt—the swine alone we could not save. Look! the horse there above tore my shirt as I drew him out of the stall; the near-handed horse would not have hurt me—he knows me! Ei! thou knowest me, Humple? Ei! we know each other.” The horse thus spoken to, laid his head over the neck of the other, and looked earnestly at Dami, who continued,—

“When I went joyfully to inform the farmer that I had saved all the animals, he said, ‘That was nothing to him; they were all insured, and he should have been paid more than their worth.’ Then I thought to myself, ‘Is it nothing that the innocent animals should all be burnt? Is life nothing when one is paid?’ The farmer must have guessed my thoughts, for he asked, ‘You have, of course, saved your clothes and things?’ ‘No!’ I answered, ‘not a thread, for I sprang into the stable first.’”

“‘How?’ I asked, ‘for if you were insured, and the animals would have been paid for, my clothes must also be paid for; the clothes also of my late father, fourteen florins, my watch, and my pipe.’”

[108]“Your pipe is smoked out,” he said; “my things were insured, but not those of my servants.”

“Oh!” said he, “if that is your sort, you may go at once. He who begins a lawsuit, has given warning. I would have given you a couple of florins, but now not a penny. Now be off!”

“And here I am; now I think I might take this near-handed horse with me. I saved his life, and he would willingly come with me. But I have not learnt to steal, and I cannot help myself thus. The best thing I can do is to spring into that water and drown myself. I can never come to any thing, and can never help myself again.”

“No, that I’ll do no longer—no longer live upon you. You also have to work hard.”

Barefoot succeeded in consoling her brother, so that he consented to go home with her. But scarcely had they gone a hundred steps, when the favorite horse, having broken loose, came trotting after them. Dami had to drive the animal he loved so much back with stones.

Dami was so ashamed of his ill luck, that he was unwilling to see any one; for it is the peculiarity of weak natures that they cannot feel any strength in themselves; when outwardly overcome, they[109] are conquered inwardly—they look upon ill success as a sign of their own weakness, and if they cannot conceal that, they conceal themselves.

At the first houses of the village Dami stopped. Mariann sent him a coat of her husband’s, who had been shot; but Dami felt an unconquerable repugnance to putting it on. Barefoot, who had praised her father’s coat as something sacred and holy, now found good reasons to prove that there was nothing in a coat—that nothing could adhere to it from its former wearer.

Mathew, the charcoal-burner, who lived not far from Mariann, took Dami to help him in his wood-splitting and coal-burning. To Dami this secluded life was most welcome; he was waiting only till he could be drafted for a soldier; then he would enlist for life, and remain always a soldier. “In the army,” he said, “is justice and order, and no man has trouble from his own family; food and clothing are provided, and when war comes, a soldier’s sudden death is always the best.”

This was the way he talked when Barefoot came on Sundays to the charcoal kiln to see him, and brought him food, and tobacco for his pipe. She would often teach him how he could cook better food at the wood-coals, and little puddings, that he could himself prepare. But Dami would only have things just as they happened, and insisted,[110] although he might have improved his housekeeping, upon living wretchedly, till the time when he would shine out as a soldier. Barefoot opposed this eternal looking forward to a coming time, and letting the present slip away. She knew that Dami indulged that secret idleness which consisted in self-pity, and this she thought would end in his becoming good-for-nothing. Only with the utmost exertion could she induce him to buy himself an axe out of his own earnings. This was his father’s, which Mathew had bought at the sale of Josenhans’ effects.

Barefoot often returned almost despairing from the forest. This did not last long. The inward trust, and native courageous gayety, which belonged to her disposition, expressed itself voluntarily in cheerful songs forever upon her lips; and those who did not know her history would never have remarked that Barefoot had now or ever a single sorrow. The cheerfulness that arose from an involuntary consciousness that her duty was well performed, and all her leisure devoted to the comfort of Mariann and Dami, impressed upon her countenance a constant joyousness. None in the house laughed as gayly as Barefoot. Old Rodel said her laugh was just like the song of the quail. She was always so helpful and respectful to him, that he gave her to understand that he should remember her in his will. Barefoot did not trouble herself nor expect much from this. She[111] relied upon nothing but the wages, which were justly hers, and whatever she performed beyond this for others, she did from benevolence and a generous disposition. Was not this to be a true Sister of Charity?

FARMER SCHECKEN’S house was rebuilt handsomer than before the fire. With the winter came the drawing for recruits, but never was there such sorrow at drawing an exemption as that Dami displayed. He was in despair, and Amrie grieved with him, for she thought the soldier’s discipline an excellent means to make the indolent Dami more firm and steadfast. But she said, “Take it as a sign that you must from this time forth support yourself like a man. You are like a little child that cannot feed himself, but must have his food given him.”

“No, indeed, that I did not mean. Do not stand there so doleful, to see who will do something for you, either good or bad; act for yourself!”

[113]For a long time he gave no hint of what he had in his mind; he went boldly through the village, and talked freely with every one, and worked industriously in the forest at wood-splitting. He had his father’s axe, and seemed with it to have gained his father’s strength.

As Barefoot one day, in the early spring, met him returning from the forest, he said, taking the axe from his shoulder,—

“Into the wood,” answered his sister; “but it cannot go alone—you must send it there.”

“You are right. But it is going to its brother; one will strike above, and the other beneath, and then there will be a crashing of trees like the sound of a loaded cannon; you will not hear it—unless you choose it. But none in this place will hear it.”

“I do not understand one word,” said Barefoot. “I am too old to guess riddles; speak plainly.”

“What—to-day?” said Barefoot, jokingly. “Do you know what Martin, the mason’s son, called to his mother? ‘Mother, throw me a clean shirt out of the window, for I am going to walk to America.’ Those who would fly away so easily, stay where they are.”

“We shall see how long I stay here,” said Dami, and turned without another word into the coal-burner’s house.

[114]Barefoot at first would have made herself merry over Dami’s strange plan, but it would not succeed. She felt that there was something serious in it. At night, when all in the house were in bed, she hastened to her brother in the forest, and declared to him, once for all, “that she could not go with him.”

Barefoot felt again all the agitation of uncertainty, which she had experienced in childhood; but she went not now for counsel to the wild service-tree, as though that could answer her doubts, as out of all question the conclusion was clear, “It is right for him to go; it is also right for me to remain here.” She secretly rejoiced that Dami could take so bold a resolution; it indicated so much manly strength of mind; and though it affected her deeply to be left alone in the wide world, she thought it right and noble that her brother should act with so much healthy courage. Yet she did not entirely trust him, for the next evening, when she met him, she said in passing—“Say nothing to any one of your plan of emigrating, for if you should not carry it out, you will be laughed at.”

“You are right,” said Dami, “but not because other people are to influence me; for as certainly[115] as I have five fingers on this hand, so certainly I shall go before the cherries are ripe; even if I must beg or steal the means to go. Only one thing I am sorry for, that I must go away and not serve Schecken a trick that he should remember during his whole life.”

“That is true man’s revenge”—Barefoot hastened to say, “that is real wickedness of heart, to leave behind one the memory of injury. There, over there, lie the graves of our parents—come! come with me, and repeat there, if you can, what you have just said. Do you know who is the most worthless of men? He who would injure another. Give me the axe. You are not worthy to hold in your hand what has once been in our father’s. Give up the axe, or I know not what I shall do. If you do not instantly tear out that thought, both root and branch, from your soul, I know not what I shall do! Give me the axe. No one shall have it who talks of stealing and murder. Give it to me, or I know not what I shall do!”

Dami said in a whisper, “It was only a thought; believe me, I did not mean it, I could not do it; but as they always call me milksop, I thought for once I would curse and threaten. You are right, and if you wish it I will go to-night to Schecken, and tell him that I harbor no malice, no bad thoughts in my heart against him.”

“That is not necessary; that would be too[116] much, but since you are reasonable, I will help you all I can.”

“No, that I cannot—I know not why, but I cannot! I have made no vow that if you write me you go on well with our uncle, that I will not follow you; but it is so uncertain, so in the mist, when one knows nothing; and then I do not willingly change. I am very well here. Now let us consider about your own affairs.”

It is the case with many emigrants, and it discloses a dark side of human nature, that they take what they hope may remain unpunished revenge. With others, the first act in the New World is to write home to the officers of justice, and reveal secret crimes. It was on this account that Amrie felt so much excitement lest her brother should associate himself with those who strike in the dark. She felt doubly joyful when Dami conquered his desire for revenge. No benevolent deed is so refreshing to the soul, as that of turning another from vice and error.

With her usual clearness of intellect, Amrie weighed all the circumstances. Her uncle’s wife had written that they were doing well—thus they knew the place of their residence. Dami’s savings were very small, her own would not go far, and though Dami thought the parish were bound to pay something, his sister would not hear of it—“That,” she said, “should be the last recourse, if[117] all others failed.” She did not explain her intentions, but her first thought had been to write to Farmer Landfried’s wife. She feared how such a begging letter would strike the farmer’s wife, who perhaps had no ready money. Then she thought of Farmer Rodel, who had promised her a place in his testament: she would ask him to give her now what he intended for her, if it were ever so little. Then it occurred to her, that perhaps Schecken, who was now so prosperous, might be moved to lend her a small sum—she said nothing to Dami of all this, but as she collected his garments, and with much trouble persuaded Mariann to let her have upon trust a piece of her treasured linen for shirts, which she sat up all night to cut out and make,—all these preparations made Dami tremble,—he had indeed acted as though his plan of emigrating was unalterable, and yet it seemed to him now as though he was constrained and forced by the stronger will of his sister to carry his plan into execution. She even appeared to him hard-hearted, as though she wished to get rid of him. He did not venture to say this distinctly—he only brought forward little difficulties, which Barefoot treated as necessary obstacles to leave-taking that would vanish when he went. She hastened to Farmer Rodel, expressly desiring that he would give her now what he promised to leave her in his will.

The old farmer asked, “Why are you so pressing? Can you not wait? What is the matter?”

She then told him that she wanted to fit out her brother, who was going to America.

This was a lucky excuse for the old farmer; he could make his stinginess pass for wise forethought and consideration for her; he declared he would not give a single farthing to help her to sacrifice herself for her brother. Barefoot entreated him to speak to Farmer Schecken. At last he consented, and boasted that he, a stranger, was going to beg of a stranger, for a stranger, but he put it off from day to day. Amrie would not spare him, and he, at last, took the path to Schecken’s farm. As it might have been foreseen, he came back with empty hands; for when Schecken asked what he intended to give, and he answered,—

When poor Amrie revealed to Mariann her sorrow at the hard-heartedness of men, the old woman broke out with angry emotion,—

“Yes,” she said, “just so are men; if to-morrow one were to cast himself into the water, and he were drawn out dead, every one would say, ‘Had he only told me what was the matter, what he wanted, I would so gladly have helped him! What would I not give to bring him back to life!’ but to help him while he was yet alive, not one would move a finger!”

Strange as it was, though the whole labor of the[119] thing rested upon Barefoot, she learnt to bear it cheerfully. One must depend on one’s self alone, was her inward resolve, and instead of being disheartened by all her difficulties, she was only made stronger and firmer. She collected every thing that she could turn to money; she carried the necklace she had formerly received from Landfried’s wife to the widow of the former Sacristan, who solaced her widowhood by lending upon pledges; even the ducat, she formerly threw back from the Surveyor, in the churchyard, she now demanded back again. Still more surprising, Rodel himself offered to demand of the village council, in which he sat, a certain sum for the service of Dami. With the public money he was always generous, as well as honest.

After a few days, he alarmed Barefoot by telling her that every thing was settled with the council, upon the condition that Dami should give up all claims to a home in the village. This had been understood from the first, but now that it was made a condition, it seemed frightful to Barefoot, that Dami should no longer have a home with her, or in any place. She said nothing of her thoughts to him, and he again appeared gay and good-humored. Mariann especially, encouraged him; she would gladly have sent the whole village to foreign countries, that they might learn something of her John. She now firmly believed that he had crossed the sea. Raven Zacky told her that the[120] salt flood of the sea prevented the tears from flowing for one who was upon the other shore.

Amrie obtained permission from the farmer to go with her brother to the next town, to make arrangement with the agent for his passage. They were astonished to find it had already been done. The village council had settled every thing, and while Dami enjoyed the privilege of poverty, its duties were exacted from him. From the deck of the ship, before it sailed into the wide sea, he must sign a certificate of his departure; not till then was the money paid.

The brother and sister returned full of sadness; they went silently into the village. Dami was oppressed with the feeling that something would happen, because he had once said so, and Barefoot was deeply grieved that her brother, at last, seemed to be thrust hastily away.

When they reached the entrance of the village, and the sign-post, upon which were the names of the village and the district, Dami said aloud, “Thou that standest here, God keep thee! Thou wilt be no longer my home, and all the people here will be no more to me than thou art.”

Barefoot wept. She determined it should be the last time till after Dami had gone. She kept her resolution, and the village people said, “Barefoot had no heart, for her eyes were dry when her brother departed!” They would have seen her weep. What were the tears that were shed in[121] secret to them? She took care to keep strong and active. Only on the few last days, when Dami’s departure was delayed, did she neglect her usual work. She would be always with her brother. When Rose scolded her, she said only, “You are right,” and ran again to Dami. She would not lose a minute while he was there. Every hour she thought she could do something, or say something that would last him his life long; then she tormented herself that she could say only common things, and that she had so often disagreed with him.

Oh, those hours of leave-taking! How they press upon the heart; how all the past and the future is crowded together into one agonizing moment, and only one look, and one embrace, must express all!

Amrie gained time for more words. When she counted her brother’s new shirts, she said, “These are good clean shirts; keep thyself good and pure within them.” As she packed every thing into the sack upon which their father’s name was marked, she said,—“Bring this back again full of money, and we shall see how gladly they will restore to you all your rights. The farmer’s Rose, if she remains single, will spring over seven houses after thee.” When she laid her father’s axe in the great chest she said,—“Oh! how smooth the handle is, how often has our father’s hand gone over it. It seems as though I felt his hand still[122] upon it. So, now, I have a good motto,—‘Sack and Axe,’ working and saving—with these, one becomes hearty, and healthy and happy. God protect thee! Say often to yourself, ‘Sack and Axe.’ I will also often say it. This shall be our mutual thought; our call to each other when we are far,—far apart,—till you write to me, or come to fetch me, or—as God will have it. ‘Sack and Axe.’ This contains all. All that we think, and all that we gain.”

When Dami sat in the wagon, and for the last time she gave him her hand, which she could not draw away till he started, then, in a clear voice, she cried after him,—

PRAISED be America! cried the night-watch, when he called the hour of the night, to the amusement of the village, many nights after Dami went, instead of the usual “Praised be God!”

Raven Zacky, who was not well off himself, and always scolding about the poor, said at going out of church on Sunday, and also when sitting on the long bench before the village inn,—“Columbus was a true savior for us. Yes, America is the slop-pail for the Old World. We shake into it what cannot be used in the kitchen. Cabbage and turnip—all will answer for those who dwell in the castle behind the house, and understand French, oui! oui! It makes good food for them.”

Through poverty of other materials, the departure of Dami was for a long time the subject of conversation in the village, and those who belonged to the village council praised its wisdom in freeing itself of one who would certainly have[124] become a charge to the parish. For he who drives many trades will certainly at last drive to ruin.

There were naturally many good-natured people who repeated all they said of her brother, and their ill-natured jokes to Barefoot. But she only laughed, and when there came from Bremen a beautiful letter from Dami (they could not believe he could have written it so correctly), she had her triumph in the eyes of all, and read her letter many times over to them. In her heart she was sad at having lost such a brother, perhaps forever. She also reproached herself that she had not put him more forward, as now he showed what a brave fellow he was, and, moreover, so good. Now, he who would have taken leave of the whole village as he would of the sign-post, filled a whole page with greetings for every one. He called them the “dear,” the “good,” the “brave.” Barefoot gained much praise whenever she showed these greetings. She always pointed to the place, with “See, there it stands in black and white.”

Amrie was for a long time quiet and reserved; she appeared to repent that she had let her brother go, or that she had not gone with him. Formerly, whether in the house or the barn, in the kitchen or the chamber, she was always singing, and when she went out with the scythe on her shoulder, she was still singing. Now they heard no sound from her lips. Some burthen held back her melody.[125] Yet there was a time when her songs were heard again; when she put the Rodel children to sleep, she sang softly; and long after they were asleep, her voice was heard in tender melodies. Then she would hasten to Mariann, and fetch her wood and water, and all else that she needed.

On Sunday afternoons, when all were seeking amusement, Barefoot remained still and motionless at the house door, looking far into the wide space, and into the sky. She saw where the birds were flying, and lost herself in dreams,—sometimes of Dami, where he was, and how it was with him; then she would fix her glance upon an over-turned plough, or upon a hen that buried itself in the sand. When a carriage passed through the village, she would look up and say, as to herself,—“They are going to some one; but upon all the streets of the wide world there is nobody coming to me—nobody thinks of me. Could I not hear them even here?” And then it seemed as though she expected something. Her heart beat quicker, as though somebody was coming, and involuntarily came from her lips,—

“I would I were as old as you are,” she said one day, when, dreaming thus, she entered Mariann’s cottage.

[126]“Be glad that your wish is not the truth,” said the other. “When I was of your age, I was merry, and weighed down at the Plaster Mill a hundred and thirty-two pounds.”

“Ah, simpleton! Do not fret away your youth; no one can give it back to you. Age comes of itself.”

Mariann easily succeeded in consoling Barefoot. Only when she was alone an unwonted timidity oppressed her. What could it be?

Strange rumors were in the village. For some days it had been said, that in Endringen there was to be a wedding, such as there had not been in the memory of man. The eldest daughter of Dominic and Amelia was to marry a rich timber-merchant of Murgthal, they said, and there were to be gay doings, such as they never had before.

The day came ever nearer. When two girls met, one would draw the other behind the hedge, or the haystack, and there was no end to the talk, although they were both in a prodigious hurry. They said people were coming from Oberland and from Murgthal, and from thirty leagues distant, for the family had extensive connections. At the village fountain there was lively excitement. No young girl would acknowledge that she was going to have a new dress, that she might enjoy the surprise the next day when it appeared. In[127] the hurry of question and answer, they forgot to draw their water, and Barefoot, who came last, went first away, bearing her full bucket. What was the dance to her? And yet she seemed to hear music in the air all around her.

The next day she had much to do in the house, and constant running, for she had to dress Rose. Rose had a quantity of hair, and the most was to be made of it. To-day she would try something new; something in the Maria Theresa style, as here in the country they called a braid of fourteen strands. Barefoot succeeded in accomplishing this difficult work of art; but scarcely was it finished, when Rose, in a rage, tore it down, and looked wildly out from the hair hanging over her face. Still, she was beautiful and stately in this disorder, and she knew it. “I will never marry into a family where they keep less than four horses,” she said, haughtily. In fact, she had many suitors among the farmers’ sons, but she seemed not inclined to choose among them. She now decided upon the country custom of two braids down her back, ornamented with red ribbons reaching to the ground. She stood there ready dressed, and wanted only a nosegay to complete her adornment. She had allowed her own flowers to wither; and, spite of all Barefoot could say, she must rob all the blossoms from the beautifully cherished flowers in the window. At length she also demanded the little dwarf Rose-Mariè; but[128] Barefoot would be torn to pieces before she would cut that. Rose scoffed and laughed, scolded, and called her “only a simple Goose-girl, who was now so selfish, though they had taken her into the family through charity.” Barefoot said not a word, but she gave Rose a look which made her cast down her eyes. Just then a red rosette had become loose upon her left shoe, and Amrie knelt down to fasten it; when partly in joke, and partly through repentance of her ill-nature, Rose exclaimed, “I have taken a fancy, Barefoot, that you shall also go to the dance to-day.”

“I am not laughing,” Rose declared. “Once in a life you shall dance, for you are also a young girl, and there will be some of your condition there. Our stable-boy is going, and some peasant’s son will dance with you. I will see that you have a partner.”

“Rose is right,” exclaimed the farmer’s wife, who had till now been silent; “I will never say a good word for you again, if you do not consent to go to this dance. Come, sit down, and I, for once, will be your dressing-maid.”

Crimson blushes succeeded each other over Barefoot’s face, as she sat there, served by her mistress; and when she turned her hair back from[129] her forehead, she felt as though she should sink down for shame. Her mistress said, “I will dress your hair as the Algäuer girls wear it. That will be very becoming to you, for you look like an Algäuer—so plump and brown. Yes, you look like one of the daughters of Farmer Landfried of Zusmarshofen.”

“Why so! How like her?” asked Barefoot; and her whole frame trembled. Why was it that she should just now be reminded of this friend that, from a child, she had never forgotten; and who, from that time, had remained in her memory like a benevolent fairy in a fairy tale. She had no ring that she could turn to make her appear. In her mind only could she conjure her hither, and that only involuntarily.

“Keep quiet, or I shall pull thy hair,” said her mistress. Barefoot sat motionless,—scarcely breathing. As she sat there with her hands pressed together, and her mistress sometimes bending over her, she felt her warm breath on her face—she seemed to herself as though she were suddenly enchanted. She said not a word, and sank her glances humbly to the ground, lest she should scare away the enchantment.

“Would that I could dress you thus for your own wedding,” said her mistress, who to-day overflowed with benevolence. “I would give thee a right honest farmer, and no one would be taken in by thee. But now-a-days things do not happen[130] thus. Money runs after money. However, do not be discouraged; as long as I live, you shall want for nothing; and if I should die—for I have sad thoughts when I think of my heavy hour—promise that you will never leave my children, but be a mother to them.”

“Oh, Heavens! how can you have such thoughts?” cried Barefoot, and tears ran down her cheeks. “It is a sin! for it is sinful to allow bad thoughts to come into one’s mind.”

“Yes, yes! you are right,” said her mistress. “But wait—sit still! I will fetch my necklace. You must wear that on your neck.”

“Oh, no, no! I can wear nothing which is not my own. I should sink to the earth with shame.”

“Yes! but you cannot go thus. Perhaps you have something of your own that you can wear.”

Barefoot related that she had once a necklace which she received when a child, from Madam Landfried; but to provide funds for Dami’s emigration, she had pledged it to the Sacristan’s widow.

Her mistress exacted a promise that she would not move, nor look at herself in the glass, till she came back, and hastened forth to reclaim the ornament, and herself became surety for the payment.

What timidity ran through the soul of Barefoot, as she sat there waiting. She, the servant, so humbly served—and, in fact, she sat as though enchanted. When she thought of the dance she[131] trembled—she was treated so kindly; and who could tell that she might not be thrust out of the dance, with none to care for her, and all her outward ornaments and her inward pleasure be in vain. “No,” she said to herself, “if I have only that which I now enjoy, it is sufficient. If I must immediately undress and remain at home, I have still had the pleasure.”

Her mistress came in with the necklace in her hand. Praise of the ornament, and blame of the Sacristan’s widow, who could take such shameful interest from a poor girl, were strangely blended together. She promised herself to pay the pledge, and gradually deduct it from Barefoot’s wages.

Now, at last, she was permitted to look at herself. Her mistress held the glass before her, and from the expression of both there shone, as it were, a mutual hymn of joy.

“I do not know myself! I do not know myself!” cried Barefoot, pressing both hands upon her face. “Oh, that my mother could see me thus! But she will certainly bless you for being so good to me. Yes, from Heaven she will support you in your heavy hour. You need fear nothing.”

“Ah, a different face, not that melancholy one, must go to the dance,” said her mistress. “But it will come when you hear the music.”

“I think I hear it now,” said Barefoot. “Yes—listen—there it is.” In fact, there now came[132] on through the village the leading wagon, covered with green branches, in which sat all the musicians. Raven Zacky stood up in the midst and blew a trumpet.

It was time to go, and all the village hastened after. Bernese chaises, with one horse and with two, from this village and from the neighborhood, passing through, were driven as though running for a wager. Rose sat on the front seat with her brother, while Barefoot went in the basket behind. As long as they were in the village she kept her eyes cast down; only when passing the house of her parents she looked up, as Mariann stood there to greet her. The old cock upon the wood-pile crowed, and the service-tree nodded a “God bless you, on the way.”

Now they pass through the valley where old Manz was breaking stones, and now over the Holder Common, where an old woman took care of the geese. Barefoot gave her a friendly nod. “Oh, Heavens,” she thought, “how did I come to this—that I can sit here so proud and well dressed. It is but an hour’s ride to Endringen. It seems as though we had but just started, and we must already alight.”

Rose was immediately surrounded and greeted by friends. “Is that a sister of your brother’s wife that you have brought with you?” her friends asked.

“No! it is only our maid,” said Rose. Some[133] beggars from Holdenbrunn, who were there, looked astonished; and after observing her a long time, cried “Ei! yes; that is Barefoot.”

These little words, “only our maid,” sunk deeply into Barefoot’s mind; but she recovered herself, and smiling, said to herself, “Let not a little word spoil thy pleasure. If you begin so, you will continually tread upon thorns.”

Rose took her aside and said, “Go now upon the dancing-platform, or wherever you find acquaintance. By and by when the music begins, I will see you again.”

Yes, there stood Barefoot, as though deserted. It seemed to her as though she had stolen her clothes, and had no right to be there. She was an intruder. “What was I thinking of,” she asked herself, “when I consented to come to a marriage-feast?” and she gladly would have returned home. She went in and out through the village, and passed the beautiful house that was built for the Brosis, and where there was much life to-day; for the mother of the Brosis, with her sons and daughters, had their summer residence there. Barefoot went again into the village, walked about, but would not look round, though she longed to have some one call her, that she might find a companion.

At the end of the village she met a genteel horseman upon a white horse, who was riding into the village. He wore the dress of a farmer of another part of the country, and sat on his horse[134] proudly. He stopped, and while he held out his riding-whip in his right hand, he patted with the left the neck of his horse. “Good-morning, pretty maiden,” he said. “Already tired of the dance?”

The horseman rode on, and Amrie sat a long time behind a hazel-hedge, where thoughts crowded upon her, and her cheeks crimsoned with shame and anger at the petulant answer she had given to a harmless question. Perplexity, and an incomprehensible internal agitation came over her. Involuntarily the song of the lovers came to her lips:

Full of joy she had begun the day, and now she wished herself dead. “Here, behind this hedge,” she said, “to fall asleep and wake no more. Oh, how delightful that would be. There is no more joy for me on earth. Why strive to obtain it? How the crickets chirp in the grass, while a warm perfume arises from it. The hedge-sparrows twitter continually as though they strove to bring out deeper, and fresher, and more musical warblings; as though they could not express or say what out of the whole heart they had to say. Far above sing the larks. Every bird sings for himself—none listen—no bird checks another, and yet, all——”

[135]Never in her life before had she fallen asleep in the day-time—and now, to sleep in the bright morning! She had drawn her handkerchief over her eyes, but the sunbeams kissed her closed lips, that in sleep were pressed poutingly together, and the light red upon her chin grew deeper. She slept perhaps an hour, then starting, awoke. The horseman upon the white horse had ridden back, and the horse was pressing with both fore feet upon her breast.

It was only a dream. Amrie looked around as though she had suddenly fallen from heaven. She scarcely knew where she was, but the sound of the music quickly aroused all her faculties, and she went with new strength back to the village where increased gayety inspired every one. She had rested, and all was forgotten that had annoyed her in the morning. Now should partners come, she could dance till morning, without rest or weariness.

A fresh bloom, like that of a child, lay upon her cheeks, and every one looked astonished at her beauty. She went to the dancing-platform. The music sounded from an empty room. There were no dancers there, only the girls that had come to wait upon the guests, were twirling round with each other. Raven Zacky looked long at Amrie—then shook his head—he appeared not to know her. She met Dominic, the farmer from the Ridge, who that day was in his glory.

[136]“Pardon me,” he said, “Does the maiden belong to the marriage-guests?”

“No, I am only a maid, and came with the daughter of the house, Rose, from Rodel Farm.”

“Good. Go up then to the farm to my wife, and tell her that I sent you to help her. They cannot have too many hands to-day.”

“As you please, willingly,” said Amrie, and went immediately. On the way she could not help thinking that Dominic had once been a servant—and now— But such a thing does not happen once in a hundred years. It cost much blood also, to elevate him to this rank.

Amelia welcomed the newly-arrived help, and drawing off Amrie’s gay spencer, she gave her a great apron with a breast cover. She must refresh herself with food before she began work. Amrie consented, and with the first word, won the good will of Amelia. “I am hungry,” she said, “and I will not give you trouble to press me to eat.”

Amrie remained in the kitchen, and gave such excellent assistance to the waiters, and knew so well how all the dishes should be arranged, that Dominic’s wife said, “You two Amries, you and my niece Amrie, can now manage every thing so well, that I will repair to the guests.”

Amrie, from Siebenhöfen, the niece, who by all the neighborhood was called proud and haughty, was so wonderfully friendly and condescending to our Amrie, that Amelia said to her, “It is a[137] pity you are not a young man, for I believe Amrie would marry you at once, and not send you off as she does all her other suitors.”

“There let him stay,” said the other Amrie. “It is a pity we could not send all the young fellows there, and we remain by ourselves.”

Barefoot would not leave the kitchen till every thing was in its place. When she drew off her apron, her dress was as clean and unwrinkled as when she first put it on.

“You must be tired, and not able to dance,” said her friend, as, with a present, Amrie took leave.

“Why tired? This is only play. Believe me, I am better for having done something to-day. I could not be happy to pass a whole day in amusement; this was certainly the reason I was so melancholy this morning. Something was the matter; but now I am just in the humor for gayety. I could dance all day, could I but find partners.”

Amelia thought she could show Barefoot no greater honor, than to take her as an equal all over the house, and into the bride’s chamber, where she showed her the large chest with the wedding-presents. Then she opened the tall, blue painted presses, with the name and the year marked upon them, all filled with the dowry of numerous pieces[138] of linen tied with gay ribbons, and with borders worked with pinks. In the clothes-presses were at least thirty dresses, and beside the high beds, the cradle, the distaff and beautiful spindles, it was hung round with children’s playthings, presented by her young companions.

“Art thou envious?” asked Amelia; then remembering that she was showing all these things to a poor girl, she added, “Believe me, these things do not make one happy. Many are happy who have not received even a stocking from their parents.”

“Ah, yes, I know that. I am not envious of these riches, but rather that your child has you and so many friends to thank for all these, and for all she has received from them. Such garments, the gift of a mother, must keep one doubly warm.”

Amelia showed her benevolence towards Barefoot, by going with her to the door of the court-yard, and treating her with as much respect as though she had eight horses in the stall.

All was lively confusion, when Amrie came again upon the dancing-ground. She remained at first, standing timidly upon the platform. Where now were the troops of children, who formerly enjoyed here a foretaste of the joys that awaited them in after-life. Ah! indeed, all that is now forbidden by the High States Government. The[139] Church and School Commission have banished the children. They dare not turn in the waltz, as they did in Amrie’s childhood. This is also a quiet sword thrust from the green-cloth.

Over the now empty floor, where a guest occasionally passed, walked up and down a solitary policeman. When he saw Amrie coming, as it were, beaming with light and joy, he went up to her, and said,—

Amrie trembled, and turned pale as death. Had she done any thing wrong? Had she gone into the stable with a bare lighted candle? She examined her whole life as far as she could remember, and yet he was as familiar as though she were already a transported criminal. She stood trembling as though her guilt were manifest. At last she said,—“Thank you, I know nothing about it, or why we are so intimate. Do you want any thing?”

“Oh, ho! How proud we are! I shall not eat you! Will you give me a plain answer. Why are you so angry?”

“Where? When? How do I flaunt round with[140] a light? I always take a lantern when I go into the stable.”

The policeman laughed, and said,—“There! there, with your brown sparklers. There you flaunt with the light—your eyes—they are like two fire-balls.”

“Get out of the way then, lest I burn you. You may be blown up with the powder in your pocket-flask.”

“There is nothing there,” said the policeman, embarrassed. “But you have singed me already.”

“No one need have me,” said Amrie, and escaped as though a chain which held her had suddenly broken. She stood in the door where many spectators had gathered, and as a new tune began, she rocked backward and forward in harmony with the melody. The consciousness of having trumped the policeman, made her contented with the whole world. He soon appeared again, however, and placing himself behind Amrie, addressed every word to her. She did not answer, and appeared not to hear him, while she nodded to the dancers as they waltzed near her. At length he said,—“When I make up my mind to marry, I will take thee.”

[141]“How take me?” she answered. “If I give myself, it will not be to thee!”

The policeman was glad to get any answer, and he continued, “If I only were allowed to dance, I would instantly dance with you.”

“I cannot dance,” said Amrie; and as the music ceased, she pressed through to find a retired spot, where she could remain unseen. She heard those behind her say, “She can dance, and better than any girl in the country.”

RAVEN ZACHY, from the music stage, reached his glass to Barefoot. She touched it with her lips and gave it back, when he said, “If you dance, Amrie, I will play with the whole power of my instrument, so that the angels shall come down to listen.”

“Yes,” said Amrie, half in sport and half in sadness; “but if no angel come down to ask me, I fear I shall have no partner.” And now she considered, Why it was necessary to have a policeman at a dance? Then she thought, “He is a man like other men, although he wears a sword and a laced hat, and before he became a policeman, he was a young fellow like the others. It must be vexatious, that he is not allowed to dance. But what is all this to me? I also must look on, and I am not paid for it.”

A short time after, they were more quiet and moderate upon the dancing-ground, for the “English Lady,” (thus in the village they called Agy,)[143] the wife of Councillor Severin, came with her children to the dance. The respectable timber-merchant called for champagne; a glass was presented to Agy, and she drank to the happiness of the young couple. She knew how to please every one by a graceful word or two. Upon the faces of all there was an expression of satisfaction. She touched her lips to many of the flower-crowned glasses, presented to her by the young fellows. Also the old women in the neighborhood of Barefoot had much to say in praise of the “English Lady.” They stood up long before she reached, and exchanged a word or two with them.

As soon as Agy had passed on, the jubilee, with singing, dancing, and loud music, began again with new strength.

Farmer Rodel’s upper clerk came to Amrie, and she trembled, full of expectation that he would ask her to dance; but he only said, “Please, Barefoot, hold my pipe till I have gone through this dance?” Then many of the young girls from her village came to her; from one she received a jacket, from another a handkerchief, a neck-ribbon, a house-key. She held them all, and still larger grew her burthen, as each dance succeeded the other. She laughed at her own situation, for no one came for her.

Now there was a waltz played so soft and tender, that it seemed as though they might float[144] upon it; and now a polka, so wild and gay, that Hie! away they went springing and stamping, all eyes sparkling, and all breathing joy. The old women, who sat in the corners, complained of the heat and dust, but none went home.

See! Amrie started. Her glance is arrested by a handsome young man, who, in the confusion, walks proudly up the room. It is the horseman she met in the morning,—the one she answered so peevishly. All eyes are turned upon him, as with his left hand behind, and with the right holding a silver-mounted pipe, he walks up and down, his silver watch-seals swinging here and there. How handsome is his black velvet jacket, his full, black velvet breeches, and his crimson waistcoat. But more beautiful than all is his well-shaped head, with close curled brown hair. His forehead above the eyes is white as snow, although his face is brown, and a full light beard covers cheeks and chin.

“And what heavenly blue eyes,” said another. “They are at the same time so roguish and so good-hearted!”

The young man passed more than once up and[145] down through the hall, apparently searching with his eyes, when suddenly he stopped, not far from Barefoot. He nodded to her. Amrie trembled, and a burning heat ran through her veins; but she did not move. Ah, no, he certainly nodded to some one behind her. He does not mean her. She made room for him to pass. He seeks another.

Amrie could not speak; but what need of words? She threw quickly all she had in her hand into the corner,—jackets, handkerchiefs, tobacco-pipes, house-keys.

They stood side by side, and the young man threw a dollar to the musicians. When Raven Zacky saw Amrie by the side of the stranger, he made the walls tremble with his music. Not more joyful can it sound to the blessed at the day of judgment, than now in the ears of Amrie.

She turned she knew not how. She was borne away by the stranger from all surrounding objects. She floated upon air, and it seemed as though they were alone, hovering therein. In truth, they both danced so well, that involuntarily all the others stopped to look at them.

“We are alone,” said Amrie; and immediately after she felt the warm breath of her partner, who answered,—

“Oh that we were alone! Alone in the world. Why cannot we dance on so, till we die?”

[146]“It seems to me exactly,” said Amrie, “as though we were two doves soaring in the air Ju hu, up in the Heavens!”

“Ju hu!” shouted the young man, so loud, that his voice seemed to rise in the air like a rocket.

Still more blessedly they swung round, till Amrie said, “Stay; has not the music stopped? Do they yet play? I do not hear them.”

“Ah, now, yes,” said Amrie; and she held her breath. Her partner thought she might be exhausted and dizzy. He led her to a table, and gave her refreshment, but still held her hand; and taking into the other hand the Swedish coin that hung by her necklace, he said, “This is in a good place.”

“It came from a good hand,” answered Amrie. “I received the present when I was a little child.”

“Oh, so much! But only think how many may be dancing the whole year, and without music. And here it is so much better.”

“You are plump,” said the stranger, jokingly. “You must have good food.”

[147]The stranger nodded; and after a while he said, inquiringly, “You are the farmer’s daughter—of——?”

“No; I am a servant,” said Amrie; and looked him steadily in the face; but he would not cast down his eyes—the eyelashes trembled, but he looked steadily at her. This contest and victory was the image of what passed within. After this self-conquest, he said, “Come, shall we have another dance?” He held firmly her hand, and their happiness was renewed; but this time more calmly and steadily. They both felt that this elevation of their souls into heaven must come to an end. Resulting from this thought, Amrie said, “We have been happy together, even if through our whole life long we should never meet again, and neither of us know the name of the other.”

Amrie, embarrassed, said again, after a while, “What we have once enjoyed, no one can ever take from us; and whoever thou art, never repent that you have given a poor girl for her life long the memory of a happy hour.”

“I do not repent,” said the young man. “But you—have you not repented the short answer you gave me this morning?”

Hand in hand they both left the dancing-hall. Barefoot heard whispering and tittering behind her, and kept her eyes fixed upon the ground. She was asking herself, “Have I not been too confident?”

Without, in the cornfield, where the first tender leaves were beginning to shoot from their protecting sheath, they looked silently at each other. No word was spoken. At length the young man seemed to ask, as to himself,—“If I might only know how it happens, that some people at the first glance can be so—so—confidential, as it were. How they can understand what the face alone at first reveals?”

“There,” said Amrie, “we have saved a soul; for you know that when two people have the same thought, at the same moment, a poor soul is saved. At your first word I had the same thought.”

[149]At this word the young man started, but he made believe rub his eyes, and Barefoot, unembarrassed, continued,—“When one sits and lies down so long in the fields alone, they think of a hundred things that never come into the minds of others, and sometimes there comes a wonderfully strange idea. Then, only attend, and you will find it is true! Every fruit-tree looks, especially when you observe it as a whole tree, just like the fruit it bears. Look at the apple-tree, when it is not extended or pruned, does it not look like the apple itself? And so the pear-tree, and the cherry. Observe them attentively, the cherry-tree has a tall stem like the cherry itself—and so I think—”

“Do not laugh at me. As the fruit-trees look like the fruit they bear, so is it, also, with men, and we instantly see it in their faces; only the trees have an honorable, honest look, and men can dissemble. But am I not talking nonsense?”

“No, you have not been goose-herd for nothing,” said the young man, with strange mingled emotions. “It is pleasant talking with you. I would gladly give you a kiss, if I did not fear it would be wrong.”

Barefoot trembled in every limb. She stooped to break off a flower, but she left it there.

After a long silence the young man said, “We shall never see each other again,—therefore it is better so.”

[150]They went back to the dancing-hall, and danced again without a word being spoken. When it was over, he led her to the table, and said, “Now, I must say farewell! But take breath, and then we must drink a glass together.”

He gave her the glass, but she put it down untasted, and he said,—“You must drink it for my sake, to the very last drop.”

Amrie continued drinking, and when at last she held the empty glass in her hand and looked round, the stranger had vanished. She went down to the house door, and there she saw him not very far off upon his white horse, but he did not look back.

The evening mist spread like a veil of clouds over the valley; the sun was already down. Amrie said aloud, as to herself, “I wish it might never be morning again,—always to-day, always to-day,” and she stood lost in dreams. Night came quickly down. The thin sickle of the moon stood just above the mountain, and not far from it, towards Holdenbrunn, the evening star. One Berner wagon after the other drove off. Barefoot stood by that of her family which was getting ready. Then Rose came out and said to her brother, “that she had promised the young men and maidens from their village to walk back with them, and of course it is well understood that a farmer and his maid-servant cannot go home together.” The Berner wagon rattled by. Rose must have seen[151] Barefoot, but she made believe not to observe her, and Amrie walked on the way the stranger had ridden. “Where is he now?” she thought. “How many hundred villages and hamlets lie in this direction, and who can say where he has gone?”

Amrie found the place where early in the morning he had greeted her. She repeated aloud the question and answer that had passed between them. She sat again behind the hazel-hedge, where in the morning she had slept and dreamed. A golden-hammer sat upon a slender spray, and the six notes of her song sounded exactly, “What do you still do there? What do you still do there?” Barefoot had to-day lived a whole life through. Had it, indeed, been only one day?

She turned back to the village, but did not go up to the dancing-hall again. Now she took the road again homewards by the Holdenbrunn; but when half way, she suddenly turned back again. It seemed as though she could not tear herself away from the place where she had been so happy; and to excuse herself, she said, “It was not safe for her to go home alone; and she would join some of the girls and young men of her village.” As she came before the alehouse in Endringen, many from their village were collected; but they merely greeted her with,—

There was running backwards and forwards, and many who had been in a hurry to get home,[152] returned to dance once more. Young men from other villages came up, and begged and pressed for only one more dance. Barefoot returned with the rest, but only to look on. At last it was agreed, that those who wished to continue dancing should be left behind.

Not without much trouble, the Holdenbrunner troop were collected before the door of the house. A part of the musicians agreed to go with them to the end of the village. Many a sleepy father of a family was drawn to the window by the music; here and there came a married playmate, who went no longer to dances, looking out to wish them “Good luck on the way.”

The night was dark; they had taken long pine-branches as torches, and the young fellows who bore them danced backwards and forwards with them. Scarcely had they gone a few steps, after the music left them, than they cried out, “that the torches dazzled and confused them,” and they were extinguished in a ditch. Now several, both men and women, were missed, and when they were called, answered from a distance. Rose was followed by the son of Farmer Kappel from Lauterbach, and scarcely had her companions joined her, when she cried out, “that she would have nothing to do with them.” Some of the young men began to sing, and others joined in, but there was no true harmony. Many jokes were made by the grandson of the Plaster-grinder Monika, of which the young[153] tailor’s apprentice was the principal butt. At length they began singing again, this time in unison, and it sounded full and clear.

Barefoot was always a good distance behind her village companions; they suffered her to be alone, and that was the best they could do for her. She was with them, and yet not of them; and as she looked often around upon the fields and woods, how wonderful in the dark was the change. The night is so strange, and yet so confidential. The whole world was as wonderful to her as she had become to herself. As one step followed another, she seemed to be drawn along without any volition of her own; she knew not that she moved. She only knew that her thoughts ran here and there, so confusedly, that she could neither overtake nor follow them. Her cheeks glowed as though every star in the vault of Heaven were a heat-inspiring sun, and sent its beams into her heart. At this moment, as though she had herself begun, and herself had given the tune, her own villagers sang the song that came to her lips in the morning,—

Barefoot remained standing long by her parents’ house, under the service-tree, thinking and dreaming. She wished she could go in and tell Mariann every thing; but she gave it up,—“Why disturb her night’s rest?” Then she went homeward. The whole village lay buried in sleep.

At length she entered the house. All within seemed more strange than without,—so strange, she felt that she could not belong there. “Why hast thou come home again? What wilt thou do here?” were the strange questions that seemed asked in every noise. When the dog barked, when the stairs creaked, when the cows in the[155] stall lowed,—in every sound was this question,—“Who is coming home? What do you do here?”

At last she entered her chamber, and sat quiet a long time, looking at the light. Suddenly she seized the light, and placed it before her little glass, so that she saw her own face. She asked herself, “Who is this? Thus he must have seen me. So I must have looked,” was the second thought. “Yet there must have been something there to please him,—else why did he look at me so?” A quiet feeling of satisfaction arose within her, and this was heightened by the thought, “You have now been respected as a person; till yesterday you were always looked upon as the servant and helper of others. Good-night, Amrie, you have lived one day?”

But this day must come to an end. Midnight was over. Amrie laid one piece after the other of her dress carefully away. “Ah, there is the music again; listen, how the rocking waltz sounds!” She opened her window; but there was no longer music. Its echo was in her ear! Below, near Mariann’s, the cock began already to crow. She heard the footsteps of men approaching; probably some belated home-goer from the wedding. They sounded so loud in the night. The young geese began to gabble in their enclosure.

“Yes,” she said to herself, “geese sleep only an hour at a time, by night as well as by day.[156] The trees are quiet, motionless. Why is a tree so wholly different in the night from the day? Such a close, dark mass, like a giant wrapped in his mantle. How much motion there still is within the motionless tree! What a world of life there is there! Not a breath of wind stirs, and yet there are drops from the trees. These may be caterpillars and beetles falling. Ah, a quail calls! It must be the one in the cage at the Heathcock’s. She does not know that it is night. And look, the evening star, which at sundown was deep under the moon, is now nearer and above the moon. The more we look at it, the higher it becomes.”

“Does it know the glances of human beings? How still! Listen! How the nightingale sings! Ah, this is a song! so deep, so broad! Can that be one bird alone?” And now Amrie shivered; for as the clock struck one, a tile, loosened from the roof, fell clattering to the ground. She trembled as she thought of ghosts, but constrained herself to listen again to the nightingale, till at length she closed her window. A moth, that looked like a great flying caterpillar full of wings, had ventured into the chamber, and fluttered about the light, gray and frightful. Amrie seized him at last, and threw him out into the darkness.

She now lays her cap, handkerchief, and jacket in a drawer, where unconsciously she seized upon an old school copy-book, preserved there, and read[157] therein, she knew not why, old moral maxims and sentences.

“How stiff and carefully are they written.” Yes, she might collect from these leaves that she once lived in the past, for all her past life seemed to have vanished.

“Now quickly to bed,” she cried; but, with her determined carefulness, she smoothed out all her ribbons, undid every knot with fingers or needle. Never in her life had she cut a knot, and now, in her extraordinary excitement, her usual care and patience did not forsake her. Every hard and embarrassing knot was patiently loosed. At last she calmly and carefully extinguished her lamp, and laid down in bed. But she found no rest, and springing up again quickly, and leaning upon the open window, she looked out into the dark night, where the stars only glimmered. In chaste modesty she covered her neck and bosom with both hands.

And now there was within her a moment of feeling, so wordless, so limitless, and yet so all embracing; a moment of death, and then of life in the whole universe, in Eternity!

Yes, in the soul of this poor girl, in her garret, had opened all there is in an endless life. All the height and the depth; all the bliss of which man is capable; and this supernatural moment asks not, “Who is it that I thus exalt?” for[158] the eternal stars shine upon the humblest cottage.

A gust of wind that blew the window-shutters together waked Amrie. She knew not how she had got to bed, and now it was day.

THUS sang Amrie in the morning, standing before the fire, while all in the house were yet asleep. The stable-boy, who had risen early to give the horses their first feed, came into the kitchen for a coal to light his pipe.

“I am mixing a warm draught for the cow in calf,” answered Barefoot, stirring in meal and clover, but without looking round.

“I and the upper servant sought you last evening at the dance, but you could not be found,” said the boy. “True, you did not want to dance; you were satisfied to be made a fool of by the stranger Prince.”

“He was no Prince, nor did he make a fool of me; and had he done so, I would rather be made[160] a fool of by such as he, than to be made wise by thee or the upper servant.”

“Because I did not ask him,” said Barefoot. The stable-boy made a coarse joke, and laughed at himself, for there are certain occasions when the most simple can be witty.

The cheeks of Barefoot glowed like crimson, from the double heat of the fire and her own inner flame.

“I tell you what,” she said, “you know yourself what you are worth, and I cannot make you respect yourself; but I can forbid you from having no respect for me. And now leave the kitchen. You have nothing to do here; and if you do not go immediately, I will show you the way out.”

“That is not necessary,” said Barefoot, taking a burning brand from the hearth that scattered sparks; “go! or I shall mark you.”

The stable-boy sneaked with a forced laugh away. Barefoot tucked up her dress, and went with the smoking drink down into the stall.

The cow seemed grateful that she had been thought of so early in the morning. She lowed, and left drinking many times to look with gentle, open eyes at Barefoot.

“Yes, now I shall be questioned and finely teased,” thought Barefoot; “but what does it matter?”

“Foolish stuff!” she added, and scolded herself. Then she finished her work quietly, and in the mean time life stirred in the house. Scarcely was Rose fully awake, when she called for Barefoot, and blamed her harshly; for Rose had lost a beautiful neck-ribbon. She declared she gave it to Amrie to keep for her; and she, in her foolish eagerness, when the stranger asked her to dance, had thrown it away with the others.

“Who knows,” she asked, “whether he were not a thief, who had stolen his horse and his dress; to-morrow he might be brought in with chains on his hands. And what a shame it was, that Barefoot had danced so high and spoken so loud. It was the first and the last time she would take her to a dance. Her eyes, indeed, had been shamed out of her head, when she heard everybody ask,—‘So she is your servant, is she?’ If the sister-in-law did not command, and they all must follow her orders, the goose-herd should instantly quit the house.”

Barefoot endured every thing calmly. She had already to-day experienced both extremes of what she must expect, and had taken the course which[162] she intended to hold. If scolded, she silently shook it off; if joked, she knew how to give back better jokes than she received. If she had not always a burning brand at hand, as for the stable-boy, she had glances and words that served her as well.

It was impossible to tell Brown Mariann all that Rose made her suffer; and as she could not speak in that house, she let her tongue loose, and at other times blamed Rose with violence. But quickly she reflected, and said, “Ah! this is not right. I am as bad as she is, when I take such words into my mouth.”

Mariann consoled her. “It is brave,” she said, “to scold thus. Why, when one looks upon a disgusting object, they must spit, else they will be ill; and when you hear, or see, or experience any thing bad, the soul must spit it out, or it will become wicked itself.” Barefoot could not but laugh at the wonderful consolation of Brown Mariann.

Day after day passed in the old manner, and soon the wedding was forgotten, the dance, and all that happened there, by every one except Barefoot, who felt perpetual anticipation, which she could not conquer. It was well that she confided all her thoughts to Mariann. “I think I must have sinned in being so excessively happy that day,” she once said.

“Oh, child, what do you mean? God loves us as his children. Is there a greater joy for parents than to see their children happy? A father, a mother, who sees her children dance happily, is doubly happy. God looked upon you as you danced so joyfully. Your parents also have seen you dance, and have rejoiced. Let the living say what they please. When my John comes back! Ah, he can dance! But I say nothing. Thou hast in me a friend who does thee justice. What more dost thou need?”

The counsel and support of Brown Mariann were consoling; but Barefoot had not wholly confided in her; had not told her all. It was not merely what people said of her that troubled her; alas, it was no longer true that she could be satisfied with being once completely happy. She longed to see again the person who had made her so; who had completely changed her whole being; and yet knew nothing more about her.

Yes, Barefoot was completely changed. She suffered no work to fail; no one could blame her; but a deep melancholy had taken firm hold of her. There was another reason for this sadness, which she could acknowledge before the world. Dami had not written a single word from America. She forgot herself so far as one day to say to Brown Mariann, “The Proverb is not false, that when a fire burns beneath an empty pot, a poor soul burns[164] also. Under my heart there burns a fire, and my poor soul burns with it.”

“That Dami has not written to me,” she said, deeply blushing. “This waiting is the most frightful murder of time. Time is never so sadly destroyed as by expectation. At no hour, at no minute, can one feel secure. No ground is firm beneath one; one foot must be always in the air.”

“Oh, child, say not so,” cried Mariann, sorrowfully. “How can you speak of waiting? Think of me, how I have waited patiently, and shall wait till my last hour, and never give it over!”

In the recognition of another’s grief, the complaint of Barefoot was extinguished in tears; and she said, “My heart is so heavy, that I think only of dying. How many thousands of pails of water must I draw, and how many more Sundays will there be? Ah, one need not, after all, fret so much, for life will soon have an end. When Rose scolds, I think, ‘Well, scold on, we shall both die soon, and then there will be an end.’ And then comes over me again such fear! I tremble at the thought of death, when I lie and think how it will be when I am dead! I shall hear nothing! I shall see nothing! These eyes, this ear is dead. Every thing that is myself will exist no longer. It is day, and I shall never know it! They will mow, they will reap, and I shall not be there. Oh, what is this dying?”

[165]“What wouldst thou have?” asked Mariann. “Many others have died of more worth than thou. We must bear it calmly—”

“Hark! the watch cries something.” Thus Barefoot interrupted her strange complaint; and she, who now would die, and again would not die was anxious to learn what the village watcher had cried.

“Let him cry,” said Mariann, sadly smiling; “he brings you nothing. Oh, what creatures we are. How must every one of us seek to crack the hard nut of life; and at last lay it aside unopened! I will tell you, Amrie, what is the matter with you. You are dying with love! Be merry! With how few is it so well; how few are so happy as to cherish a true, real love! Take an example from me. Let hope never die! Do you know who within a living body is already dead? He who does not every morning, especially in every spring, think, ‘Now, life first begins with me; now, something comes which has never happened before.’ You must yet be happy; you do unconsciously the work of the righteous. What have you not done for your brother, for me, for Farmer Rodel, for every one? But it is well that you do not know the good you do. He who does good, and is always praying and thinking of it, and builds a future upon it, will pray himself right through heaven, and perhaps on the other side will keep the geese.”

[166]“That I have done here,” said Amrie, laughing. “I am quit of it there.”

“An inward voice tells me,” continued the old woman, “that he who danced with you was no other than my John. And I will now say to you, that if he is not already married, he must marry you. He would always willingly have worn velvet clothes. I think he is now waiting about the frontiers till our present King dies, and then he will come home. How wrong of him that he does not let me know, when I have such a longing for him!”

Barefoot shuddered at the undying hope of poor Mariann, and the tenacity with which she forever clung to it. Henceforth, she never mentioned the stranger, but when from any cause she spoke of hope or of return, she instantly named Dami, although, secretly, she thought of the stranger. “He was not beyond the sea, and could come again or write to her—but alas, he had not even asked where she dwelt. How many thousand cities and villages, and solitary farms there are in the world! Perhaps he is now seeking thee, and can never find thee. But no—he could ask in Endringen. How easily could he ask Dominic or Amelia, and they could give him any information he sought. But I—I know not where he is. I can do nothing!”

It was again spring, and Amrie stood by her flowers in the window, when a bee came flying to the plants, and sucked from the open calix.

[167]“Ah! so it is,” thought Amrie, “a woman is like a plant,—rooted in one place,—she cannot go and seek,—she must wait, and wait to be sought.”

Thus sang Barefoot. It was wonderful how all songs and all music seemed made for her. How many thousands, out of the depths of their souls, have sung these songs, and how many thousands will continue to sing them. You that long, and at last hold lovingly intwined, a heart with your own, you hold also intwined all that ever loved or will ever love.

BAREFOOT stood, one Sunday afternoon, at the house door, looking dreamingly into the vague distance, when the grandson of Charcoal Mathew came running down the village street, and nodding to her from a distance, cried,—

Barefoot’s knees sank beneath her, and with a trembling voice she cried, “Where is he,—where?”

Barefoot was obliged to sit down upon the stone bench before the house, but only for a minute; then recovering herself quickly with the words,—“My Dami! My brother!”

“Yes, Barefoot’s Dami,” said the boy, good-humoredly, “and he promised me you would give me a farthing if I brought the message to you. Now give me one.”

[169]“Oh, no,” said the boy, “he told my grandfather that he had not a penny.”

She went quickly back into the house, and asked one of the maids to milk the cow in the evening, in case she did not get home in season, for she had to go out directly.

With her heart beating, sometimes in contempt at Dami, sometimes in sadness at his ill luck, then again in anger that he had come back; and then she reproached herself that she could meet her only brother with such emotions. She went through the fields and down the valley, to the Moosbrunnenwold. The way to Charcoal Mathew’s could not be missed, although it turned aside from the foot-path. The odor of the kiln-burner led infallibly to it.

How merrily the birds sing in the trees, she thought, and a sorrowful child of man wanders beneath them. How melancholy must it be for Dami to see all this again, and how hard it must be for him, if he has no other resource, to come home and depend upon me, and take all that I have. Other sisters have help from their brothers, and I——. But I will show thee, Dami, that thou must now remain where I place thee.

Full of such thoughts, Amrie at last reached the coal-burner’s. She saw no one except Mathew, who sat by his hut and smoked a wooden pipe,[170] which he held with both hands. A coal-burner is like his kiln,—he is always smoking.

“Has anybody made a fool of me?” Barefoot asked herself. “Oh, that were a shame! What have I done to anybody, that they should put so miserable a joke upon me?”

With clinched hands and a burning face, she now stood before Mathew. He scarcely raised his eyes, much less did he utter a word. So long as the sun shone he was perfectly dumb; at night only, when no one could look him in the face, he began to speak.

The old man opened his hands, pointing right and left, and shook his head again, as though he could not be in either path.

The coal-burner pointed with his thumb to the side where the foot-path led round the mountain.

“Oh, speak one word,” said Barefoot, now weeping violently, “only one word. Is my Dami here, or where is he?”

At last the old man said, “He is there! He[171] has gone up the foot-path to meet you,” and then, as though he had said too much, he pressed his lips together and went to his kiln.

There stood Amrie, and laughed in derision and sadness at the simplicity of her poor brother. “He sends for me, and then cannot remain in the spot where I could find him. How could he believe that I should take the foot-path? It will occur to him now, and he will take the other path; we shall be running away from each other as in a fog.”

She sat down upon the stump of a tree. Her heart throbbed and glowed. The flame could not break out; it consumed her inwardly. The birds sang sweetly. The branches in the forest rustled. Ah, what is all this, if no clear note is returned in the heart? As if in a dream, Barefoot remembered how she had once cherished thoughts of love. “How,” she asked herself,—“how couldst thou suffer such wishes to arise? Hadst thou not misery enough in thyself, and in thy brother?” The thought of this love was to her now like the recollection of a warm sunny day, in the midst of winter. We can believe that it was once warm and sunny, but we can understand it no longer. She must now learn the misery of waiting, of hope deferred, standing high upon a summit, where there is scarcely a hand’s-breadth to support one. The old misery returns, forever increasing.

She went into the stone hut of the coal-burner;[172] there lay a sack scarcely half full, with the name of her father upon it.

“Oh! how you have been dragged about,” she said, half aloud. She checked her excitement. She wished to see what Dami had brought back with him. “He has at least the good shirts that I made from the linen I bought of Mariann, and perhaps there is a present from our uncle in America; but if he had any thing decent, would he have gone first to the coal-burner in the forest? Ah, no! he would have shown himself in the village.”

Barefoot had time for these reflections, for the sack was truly artistically knotted together. Her usual skill and patience alone succeeded, at last, in loosening it. She took out all that was in the sack, and with an angry glance said to herself,—

“Oh! thou good-for-nothing! There is not a whole shirt in the sack; and now you can take your choice, to be called ‘Beggar-man,’ or ‘Rag-man.’”

This was not a good disposition in which, for the first time, to meet her brother; and this Dami felt, for he stood waiting at the door of the hut till she had put every thing back into the sack; then he stepped up to her, and said, “God bless thee, Amrie! I bring you nothing but dirty clothes; but you are neat, and will soon—”

“Oh! dear Dami, how you look!” shrieked Amrie, and lay upon his breast; but quickly she[173] tore herself away, and said,—“In heaven’s name, you smell of brandy! Oh! have you come to that?”

“No! Mathew gave me a little spirit of juniper, for I could no longer stand. It has gone ill with me, but I am not bad. This you may believe, although I cannot prove it.”

“I believe you! You would not deceive the only person there is left to believe you. Oh, how wild and miserable you look! What a beard you have got. I cannot suffer that. That must come off. But you are well? Nothing is the matter with you?”

“What you are, and what you will be, that we will not now consider. Now tell me how it has fared with you?”

Dami thrust aside with his foot a half-burnt log, called a useless brand, and said, “Look! exactly such am I; not wholly burnt to a coal, and yet no longer sound wood.”

Barefoot reminded him, that he should tell his story without complaint; and Dami entered upon a long, long history, amounting to this:—“That he could not remain with his uncle, who was hard-hearted and selfish, and his wife grudged every mouthful that he put into his mouth; that he left him, and sought work elsewhere; but that he always experienced more and more of the selfishness of men. In America they[174] could see a man fall into misery, and never look after him.”

Barefoot could not help smiling, as his relation always ended in——“And then they threw me upon the street.” She could not help saying,—

“Yes, that is like you. You always allow yourself to be thrust aside. You were so as a child. When you stumbled a little, you let yourself fall like a log of wood. ‘Out of a stumbler we must make a hopper.’ From this comes the Proverb.[B] Be cheerful! Do you know what you must do when people would annoy you?”

“No; we must annoy them if we can. It will always annoy them most, to see us keep an upright position, and a bold face. You stand before the world, and say,—‘Treat me well, if you please, or treat me ill. Kiss me, or beat me, whichever you please.’ This is easy enough. You submit to their treatment, and then you pity yourself. Would I allow any one to send me here or there, if I did not choose it myself? You must stand up like a man for yourself. You have been knocked about in the world long enough. It is time to show yourself as master of yourself.”

Reproach and advice often appear to the unlucky like unjust severity. Such appeared to Dami the words of his sister. It was horrible [175]that she could not look upon him as the most unfortunate of men. It is the most difficult thing in the world to give a man confidence in himself. Most people gain it only after they have been successful. Dami would not relate another word to his heartless sister, and it was only later that she succeeded in gaining a particular account of all his adventures, and how at last he came back to the Old World as a stoker on board a steam-vessel. And now, when she reproached him for his self-tormenting susceptibility, was she secretly aware that she was not free from it herself.

Through her almost exclusive intercourse with Mariann, she had been betrayed into thinking and speaking too much of herself, and had become too sad at heart. Now, that she had to raise and cheer her brother, she unconsciously cheered herself; for there is this mysterious power in sympathy, that when we help another, we also help ourselves.

“We have four strong, healthy hands,” she said, in conclusion; “and we will see if we cannot force our way through the world; and to force one’s way through, is a thousand times better than to beg one’s way through. Come, Dami! now come home with me.”

Dami was very unwilling to show himself in the village; he shrank from the ridicule which would break out on every side. He wished to remain concealed. But Barefoot said, “Come,[176] go with me through the village on this bright Sunday afternoon, and let them have their laugh out. Let them talk, and point, and laugh—then it will be all over; you will have swallowed the bitter dose at once, and not drop by drop.”

After long and violent opposition, and when the silent Mathew had joined his persuasions with Amrie’s, Dami consented to go; and, in fact, coarse jokes rained from every side upon “Barefoot’s Dami,” who, they said, “had taken a pleasure voyage to America at the expense of the parish.” Mariann, alone, received him in a friendly manner; and at the second word, asked him, “Hast thou heard any thing of my John?”

In the evening Barefoot brought the barber, who took off his wild beard, and gave him the smooth face customary in that place.

Early the next morning Dami was summoned to appear in the Public Hall, and as he trembled, he knew not why, Amrie promised to follow him there, although she could not much help him.

The Council gave him notice, that he was expelled from the place. He had no right to remain longer where he might become a burthen. How astonished were the councillors, when Barefoot arose and said, “Yes, well! you may expel him, but when? When you can go out to your churchyard, where our father and our mother lie, and say to their buried bones, ‘Arise, and go forth with your child.’ Then you may expel him. You cannot[177] turn a child away from the place where his parents are buried. There he is more than at home. If it is written a thousand and a thousand times in your books,” pointing to the bound Registers upon the table, “it cannot happen; you cannot do it.”

One of the Council whispered to the schoolmaster,—“Barefoot has learnt this from dark Mariann;” and the Sacristan nodded to the Mayor, and said, “Why do you suffer this? Ring for the policeman, and send her to the madhouse.”

But the Mayor only smiled, and explained to Barefoot, that the community had bought itself free from all expense for Dami, by paying the greater part of the passage-money for his voyage to America.

“Nowhere have I a home!” said Dami. He was almost pleased to be always and still more unfortunate. Now no one could deny that he was the most unhappy man in the world. Barefoot would have striven longer, but she saw that it would be of no use. The law was against her. She declared she would work the nails off her fingers, rather than receive any thing for her brother or herself from the Parish. And she promised to pay back what Dami had already received.

[178]“Shall I make a record of that also?” asked the Secretary of the Council.

“Yes,” said Barefoot, “write it down; for only what is written has any value here.” She signed the record. In the mean time Dami was told, that, as a stranger, he had permission to remain three days in the village; at the end of that time, if he had not found some means of support, he would be expelled; and, if necessary, he would be carried by force beyond the limits.

Without another word Barefoot left the hall, taking Dami with her, who wept because she had constrained him to bear this unnecessary humiliation. It would have been better to remain in the forest, and to have been spared the mortification of being expelled as a stranger from his birthplace.

Barefoot would have answered, that it was better to know distinctly the worst that could happen, but she felt that she needed all her strength to keep herself firm. She, also, was expelled with her brother, and stood alone before a world that supported itself by might and law, while she had nothing to oppose to it but her empty hands.

She held herself firmer than ever. Dami’s unhappiness and misfortune did not weigh her down, for thus we are made; when an all-absorbing sorrow fills the heart, another, however heavy, is more easily borne, than if it had come alone; and as Barefoot was oppressed by a secret grief, against[179] which she could make no resistance, she bore herself more proudly against that which was known. She gave not a single minute to reverie, but with strong arms and clinched hands, she asked, “Where then is the work, even if it be the heaviest, I will undertake it, if it will only save me and my brother from dependence and indigence.” She often thought of going with Dami to Alsatia, to work in a factory. It was terrible to her, that they should be obliged to do this, but she would accustom herself to the thought, and when the summer was over they would go, and then, “Farewell, home! We shall be at home with strangers!”

The nearest advocate that both the orphans had in the place was now powerless. Old Farmer Rodel was lying dangerously ill, and the night after the stormy meeting of the Council, he died. Barefoot and Mariann were those who wept the most genuine tears at his funeral. On their return home, the old woman mentioned as especial reason for her tears,—“He was the last among the living, who danced with me in my youthful days. My last partner is now dead.”

Soon after she held a different opinion of him, for it appeared that Rodel, who for long years had consoled Barefoot with the promise of remembering her in his will, so far from leaving her any thing, he did not even mention her. As Mariann would not cease scolding about it, Amrie said to her,—“It is all the same, misfortunes never come[180] single. They hail now from every side upon me, but the sun will surely shine again.”

The heirs of Farmer Rodel presented Barefoot with some of his old clothes. She would gladly have refused them. But could she now venture to show more pride? Dami, also, refused the old clothes, but was obliged to yield. It seemed to be his fate, to spend his life in the clothes of the departed.

Dami found a home with Mathew. The wood-carrier told him that he should begin a process, for as he had no home, his silence would be giving up all right to one. The people made themselves merry, that the poor orphans had neither time nor money to begin a lawsuit. Dami was quite happy in the solitude of the forest. It suited him exactly, not to be obliged to dress or undress. It was with the utmost difficulty that Barefoot could make him wash and dress himself on Sunday afternoons, when she would sit with him and Mathew. Little was said by either of them. She could not prevent her thoughts from wandering about the world, in search of him who had once, for a whole long day, made her so happy; indeed, had lifted her into heaven. “Did he, then, never think of that, or of her? Can a man forget another, one with whom he has been so happy?”

One Sunday morning, towards the end of May, every one had gone to church. It had rained the day before, and a cool refreshing breath came from[181] mountain and valley, while the sun shone brightly. Barefoot intended to go to church as usual, but she sat at the window, listening to the church-bells, till it was too late. This had seldom or never happened before. But as it was too late for church, she would remain in her room and read her hymn-book. She looked over her drawers, and was surprised at the quantity of things she possessed. Then she sat upon the floor, and read a hymn, then sang it, softly. Something moved at the window. She looked around, and there was a white dove standing upon the sill, and looking at her. When the glances of the maiden and the dove met, the latter flew away, and as Amrie looked after him, she saw him soar away far over the fields before he descended to alight.

This little occurrence, which was indeed so natural, made her instantly happy. Her thoughts went out over mountain, fields and woods, and the whole day she was cheerful. She could not say why, but it seemed as though a new joy opened in her soul, she knew not whence it came. At noon, when she leaned against the door, she shook her head, as she thought of this strange occurrence. “It must be,” she thought, “it must surely be, that some one has had good thoughts of me; and why may it not happen, that a dove should be the silent messenger to bring them to me? Animals live in the same world where the thoughts of men[182] are floating about, and who knows whether they are not the bearers of them all?”

Little could the people who saw Amrie, as she leaned on the door, imagine the strange life passing within her.

WHILE Barefoot, whether in the village, the field, or the wood, dreamed, and toiled, and sorrowed,—sometimes trembling with strange anticipations of joy, sometimes feeling as though thrust out from the whole world,—two parents in another parish were sending out their son, that he might return to them far richer than he went forth.

In Allgäu, in the hall of the great farm-house sat the farmer and his wife, with their youngest son. The farmer began,—“Listen, my son; it is now more than a year since you returned from your journey. I know not what happened to you, but you came home like a whipped hound, and said, you would rather seek a wife here in this place. I do not see that you are likely to succeed. Will you, for once, follow my advice. Afterwards, I will never say another word.”

“Good! try again; once seeking is nothing. You will make me and your mother happy if you[184] take a wife from the place we came from; especially from where your mother came from; for I can tell you, wife, to your face, that in the whole world there are no better women; and if you are wise, John, you will find one of the right sort; then, upon our death-bed, you will thank us that we sent you to our home for a wife. If I could only go with you, we would soon find the right one. But I have spoken with our George; he will go with you if you ask him. Ride over, and propose it.”

“If I may speak my mind,” said the son, “if I must go again, I would rather go alone. I am so made that I could not bear a witness. I could not advise with any one. If it were possible, I would rather be unseen and unknown. If there were two of us, it might as well be cried out by the town crier, and give them all time to make themselves up for the occasion.”

“As you please,” said his father, “since such is your will. One word. Start at once. We want a mate for our white horse; endeavor to find one, but not in the market. When you are in the houses you can inquire, and see for yourself; and, on your way home, you can purchase a Berner wagon. Dominic, in Endringen, has three daughters. Seek one of them. A daughter from that family would be just right.”

[185]“And it would be better,” continued the father, “that you first looked at Amrie of Siebenhöfen. She has land and money. But that need not be thy object. However, I will say no more. You have your eyes in your head. Come, get yourself ready. I will fill your purse. Two hundred crown thalers will be enough; but if you need more, Dominic will lend it to you. Only make yourself known. I cannot understand why you did not at the wedding. Something must have happened there. But I will not inquire about it.”

The farmer immediately began to fill the purse for him. He brought out two large rolls of gold pieces. If you looked at him, you could see how pleased he was to let the great coins run from one hand into the other. He made little heaps of ten thalers each, and counted them twice and three times over, so as not to make a mistake.

“Well, be it so,” said the young man, and rose from his chair. It is the stranger who danced with Amrie at the wedding in Endringen.

Soon he brings the white horse, already saddled, from the stable, and straps on his mantle-sack, while a beautiful wolf-hound sprang up and licked his hand.

“Yes, yes,” said the young man, “I will take you with me.” And now, for the first time, he appeared cheerful, crying to his father through[186] the window, “Father, may I take Lux with me?”

“Yes, if you will,” sounded from within the room, together with the clinking of money. The dog, who appeared to understand the conversation, began a joyful barking, revolving round and round in the room.

The young man went in; and while he was strapping the girdle with the money about him, he said, “You are right, father, a change will do me good. I know, indeed, that we should not be superstitious, but it has done me good already, that as I went into the stable, the horse turned towards me and whinnied; and now the dog wants to go with me. If we could consult animals, who knows but that they would give us the best advice?”

The mother smiled, but his father said, “Do not forget to go to Raven Zacky, and do not engage yourself to any thing without consulting him. He knows the circumstances of every one for ten miles round; and is, in fact, a living record of mortgages. Now, God bless you! You can take your time, and stay away ten days.”

Father and son shook hands, and his mother said, “I will go a little way with you.”

The young man led his horse by the bridle, and walked by his mother’s side, silent, till they had left the court, and turned into a little side lane; then the mother said hesitatingly, “I would give you a few words of advice.”

She took his hand in hers, and said, “Stand still, for I cannot talk while walking. Take care, my son, be sure that she pleases you. This is the first thing, for without love there is no happiness. I am an old woman, and may speak without reserve.”

“If you do not think of it with joy; if it is not to you the first gift of heaven that you may dare give her a kiss,—then it is not true love!—Stay a little longer, this is not all; there may be something concealed—believe me”—the old lady hesitated, and the color mounted in her cheeks—“look, if there is not true respect, and if you have not joy also in this—that a woman does a thing exactly so—takes a thing in her hand and lays it down exactly as she does. Observe also how she treats her inferiors.”

“I understand, mother, and take your meaning at once. Speaking will tire you. I understand; she must not be too proud, nor too familiar.”

“That, indeed; but I can understand by the expression of the mouth whether one is given to anger and scolding. Ah, if you could only see her weep with anger, or surprise her in a passion, she would betray her true disposition. The hidden temper sometimes shows itself with vultures’ claws, like the spirit of evil itself. Oh, my child,[188] I have learnt and experienced much. I can see by the way she blows out a candle, what her temper is. She who blows it out with a puff, leaving sparks and smoke, has a hasty temper, and does things by halves. She has no true repose of disposition.”

“Ah, mother, how difficult you make it. It is, after all, and always will remain, a lottery.”

“Yes—you need not be governed by my opinion; but when you meet with any thing that recalls my words, you will understand me better. Observe, whether she talks readily with her work in hand. If she takes her work when she is sitting with you, whether she does not leave off work at every word; and, indeed, if it is not all for show. Industry is every thing with a woman. My mother always said a woman should never be with empty hands; and yet, when she is at work, she must be calm and steady, and not as though she would tear a piece out of the world. When she asks a question, or answers one, remark whether she is timid or bold. You would not believe it, but girls are very different when they see a man’s hat, from what they are among themselves. There are those who think when you are in the room their tongues must not be still an instant.”

The young man laughed, and said, “Mother, you should go about in the world with your sermon, and have a church for young women alone.”

“Yes! that I might, indeed,” said his mother,[189] smiling; “but, naturally, I preach first to you. Observe particularly how she behaves to her parents, and brothers and sisters. You are a good son, and I need say no more. You have learnt the fifth commandment.”

“Yes, mother, you may be easy on this point. I have sure signs to judge by. Those who boast much of their love for their parents, that is nothing. Love is best shown by actions. Those who prattle about it are slow enough when it comes to performance.”

“Ah, yes, you are clever, my son,” said his mother, laying her hand upon his breast, and looking into his face. “Shall I go on?”

“It seems to me as though to-day I could, for the first time, speak to you freely; and if I should die, I will leave nothing forgotten that I would say. The fifth commandment; yes, it now occurs to me what my father once said of it. Oh, he understood every thing, and had read many books. I once heard him, as he was speaking to the Pastor, say, ‘I know the reason why a reward is attached to the fifth commandment alone, where one would naturally think it unnecessary. But it says, “Honor your father and mother, that you may live long.” That does not mean, that a good child shall live till he is seventy or eighty years old; no, he who honors father and mother lives long, but in times past. He lives the life of his parents in[190] memory and in thought, which cannot be taken from him; and whatever his age may be, he has lived long upon earth. He who does not honor his father and mother is here but to-day, and is gone to-morrow.’”

“Mother, there is truth in that. I understand it, and will not forget to teach it to my children. But, mother, the longer you speak, the more difficult it seems to find one that I shall like. She must be like you.”

“Oh! child, do not be so simple. At nineteen and twenty I was very different. I was wild and self-willed, and even now I am not what I should be. But what was I saying? Yes, of thy wife! It is strange you should find it so difficult. From infancy, every thing has been difficult to you. At two years old, you had scarcely learnt to walk, and now you can spring like a young colt. Only a trifle or two more, but from these we often learn great things. Observe how she laughs,—not a giggle, neither an affected laugh, but heartily, with her whole soul. I wish you could know how you laugh yourself; then you would understand me.”

At this John laughed heartily, and his mother cried “Ah, yes! That is the way my father laughed. Just so he shook his shoulders and sides.” As the mother said this, so much longer the son laughed, till at last she joined in, and when one ceased the other began again.

[191]They sat down on a grassy bank, and let the horse graze. While the mother plucked a daisy, and played with it in her hand, she said, “Yes, this is something of consequence. Observe whether she tends her flowers carefully. There is more in this than one would believe.”

They heard from a distance maidens singing. The mother said, “Remark also, whether, in singing, she willingly takes the second part. It signifies something when one would always give the key. Look, there come the school children, and this reminds me of something. If you can find out whether she has preserved her writing-books from her school-days. This is of importance.”

“Yes, mother, I will take the whole world as witnesses; but what her writing-books have to do with it, I cannot imagine.”

“That you ask, shows that you have no experience. A young girl who does not gladly preserve every thing she has once valued has no true heart.”

During this conversation, the young man had been trying to untie a knot in the lash of his whip; now he took a knife from his pocket and cut it in two, his mother said, pointing with her finger, “That you may do, but not a young girl. Observe whether she cuts a hard knot; there is a secret in this.”

“That I can guess,” said her son, “but your shoe-string is untied, and it is time to part.”

“Yes, and now you remind me of something; of[192] one of the best signs. Observe whether she treads evenly, or on one side or the other, and whether she wears out many shoes.”

“For that, I must run to the shoemaker,” said her son laughing. “But, mother, all this can never be found out of another.”

“Ah, yes, I talk too much. You need not remember all I have said, only when any thing occurs you may be reminded of it. But, my son, you know that I have never vexed you with questions; but now, open your heart to me, and tell me what happened last year at the wedding, in Endringen, when you came home like one bewitched, and have not been like yourself since. Tell me, perhaps I can help you.”

“Oh, mother, that you cannot; but I will tell you. I saw one there, who would have been the right one, but after all she was the wrong one.”

“No—but she was yet the wrong one—why should I say much about it—she was a servant!”

He breathed heavily, and the mother and son were for some moments silent. At length, his mother laid her hand upon his shoulder, and said, “Oh, my son, you are brave, and I thank God who has made you so. You have done bravely to drive her out of your mind. Your father never would have consented, and you would have lost a father’s blessing.”

[193]“No, mother, I will not make myself out better than I am. It did not please me that she was a servant. It would not do, and therefore I came away. But it has been harder to forget her than I could have believed. But it is all over now—or it must be all over. I have promised myself, that I will not inquire after her. I will not ask who she is, or where she is. I will bring you, God willing, a farmer’s daughter.”

“I believe you,” she said, and pressed his hand many times. “Now good fortune, and my blessing go with you.”

The son mounted his horse, and the mother looking after him cried,—“Hold, I have something more to say. I have forgotten the best sign.”

The son turned his horse, and said smiling, “Mother, it must really be the last.”

“Yes, and the best. Ask the young girl about the poor in the place, and then go round and hear what the poor have to say of her. A farmer’s daughter cannot be good for much who has not, at least, one poor person on hand to whom she can do good. Inquire about this. And now, my son, ride on, and God go with you!”

As he rode away, his mother repeated a prayer in his behalf, and turning again into the court, she[194] said, “I should have told him to inquire after the Josenhans children, and learn what has become of them.” Who can tell the hidden and secret ways the spirit wanders; the streams that draw us from our accustomed paths, or deep beneath them. A long-forgotten song, a dancing-tune suddenly occurs to our memory, we cannot sing it aloud, because the whole is not perfect in our recollection, but it moves us inwardly, as though we heard it sung. What is it that thus suddenly awakes this forgotten melody?

Why did the mother, just then, think of these children, who had so long vanished from her memory? Was it the devout sensibility of the moment, which awoke the remembrance of another long past emotion, and the circumstances connected with it? Who can comprehend the invisible elements that hover around, and connect man with man, thought with thought?

When the mother came back into the court, the farmer said jokingly,—“You have no doubt given him the best instructions how he may select the best wife, but that I have provided for. I have written to Raven Zacky, who will show him the best houses. He must not bring one who comes empty handed.”

“I know as much as that,” said the farmer, “but why should she not have money and goodness also?”

[195]His wife was silent, but after a while she said, “So, you have sent him to Raven Zacky. It was with Raven Zacky the Josenhans boy was placed.” This name recalled her former thoughts to her, and now first was she conscious of recollections to which she frequently recurred in the course of the events which followed.

“I know nothing of what you are saying. What is that child to you?” asked the farmer. “Why do you not say that I have acted wisely?”

“Yes, yes, you have been prudent,” said his wife. But the old man was not satisfied with this tardy applause, and went out grumbling.

A conscious suspicious fear, that John’s affair would not succeed, and that they had perhaps been too hasty, made the old man uneasy, and imparted his uneasiness to all about him.

IN the evening of the same day that John had ridden forth from Zusmarshofen, Raven Zacky came to Farmer Rodel’s, and sitting with him in his back room, read a letter to him in a low voice.

“A hundred dollars, crown dollars, I must have when the thing is settled, and promised in writing too,” said Raven Zacky.

“No, not a groschen less than a round hundred—but then I make you a present of double the sum; I do it willingly for you and your sister. I could get in Endringen, or in Siebenhöfen, as much again. Your Rose is a respectable farmer’s daughter; that cannot be denied—but for any thing else they might ask she is not remarkable. What are a dozen such worth?”

“Yes, yes, I will be silent, and not disturb your writing. Now give me the receipt.”

[197]Farmer Rodel knew whom he had to deal with, and after he had written he said, “What do you think; shall I tell Rose about this?”

“Indeed, it were best, but she must not let it be known to any one in the place. We all have enemies. You and your sister no less than others. Take my advice; tell Rose to wear her every-day dress, and to milk the cows when he is here. I will introduce him to your house. You have read what Landfried writes—‘that he has his own peculiar notions, and would be off at once if he saw that any preparation had been made for him.’ This very evening, you must send to Lauterbach for your brother-in-law’s white horse. I will send the wooer with the broker to look at the horse. Take care that you do not betray yourself.”

As soon as Raven Zacky had gone, Rodel called his wife and sister into the back room, and told them, with strict orders to keep it secret, that in the morning a suitor would come for Rose; a man like a prince, who had a farm such as there was not a second in the country—in one word, the son of Farmer Landfried of Zusmarshofen. He then gave them the advice of Raven Zacky, and recommended the strictest secrecy.

After supper, Rose could not refrain from asking Barefoot if she would not go with her as a servant when she was married; she would double her wages, and then she need not go across the Rhine to work in a factory.

[198]Barefoot gave an evasive answer, for she was little inclined to go with Rose. She knew, beside, that she had some other motive in asking the question. In the first place, she wanted to show her triumph, that she had a suitor in view, and then she wanted Barefoot to take charge of her housekeeping, with which she troubled herself very little. Barefoot would have willingly done this for a mistress she loved, but not for Rose; and if she once left her present service, she would go into a factory with her brother.

As Amrie was going to bed, her mistress called her and intrusted her with the secret, adding, “I know you have always been patient with Rose; but now be doubly so, that there may be no noise in the house while the expected suitor is here.”

“Yes, certainly, but I think it wrong that she should only this once milk the cows. That will be deceiving the young man—beside, she cannot milk.”

“Thou and I—we cannot alter the world,” said her mistress, “and I think you have trouble enough of your own. Let others do as they will.”

Barefoot laid down with heavy thoughts, that people should thus, without conscientious scruples, deceive each other. She knew not, indeed, who the deceived might be, but she pitied the poor young man, and it seemed still worse, when she thought, “Perhaps Rose will be as much deceived in him as he is in her.”

[199]In the morning, when Barefoot looked early from her window, she started back as though she had suddenly received a blow. “Oh, heavens, what is that?” She rubbed hastily her eyes, and looked again—then asked herself whether she were not dreaming? “Ah, no! there is the horseman who was at the Endringen wedding. He is coming to the village! He is coming for me! No, he does not know me! But he shall know. Ah! no! no! What am I thinking of? He comes nearer and nearer! He is here! But he does not look up!” A full-blown pink falls from Amrie’s hand over the window-sill, and strikes upon the mantle-sack of his horse, but he does not see it—it fell upon the street, and Barefoot hastened down to recover the treacherous signal. And now the fearful thought struck her, that he is Rose’s suitor—that he it is whom she meant last evening. She did not mention his name, but it can be no other! None! He is the person to be deceived! In the stable, upon the green clover which she had gathered for the cows, she knelt down and prayed fervently to God, to save him from becoming the husband of Rose. That he should become her own, she ventured not the thought; she could not indulge the hope!

Soon as she had finished milking, she hastened to Mariann to ask her what she should do. Mariann was lying severely ill. She had become extremely deaf, and could scarcely understand a connected[200] sentence, and Barefoot could not venture to shriek the secret which she had partly trusted, and which the old woman had partly guessed, so loud that people in the street might hear. Thus she had to return uncounselled to her home.

She was obliged to go out into the fields, and stay the whole day, planting. At every step she hesitated, trembled, and was on the point of going back to tell the stranger every thing. Yet a feeling of duty to her employer, as well as calmer reflection, held her to her task. If he is so inconsiderate as to act without reflection, then he cannot be helped; he will deserve no better. Engaged is not married. With this she consoled herself—but she was all day uneasy. When she returned in the evening to milk the cows, Rose sat with a full bucket before a cow that had already been milked, and sang in a voice loud and clear, while she heard the stranger in the neighboring stall consulting the farmer about a white horse. But whence comes this white horse? Hitherto they had none. Then the stranger asked, “Who is that singing?”

“That is my sister,” said the farmer. Hearing this, Amrie sang the second part, thinking it would induce the stranger to ask whose was the other voice? But her singing prevented her from hearing the question, although he did really ask. As Rose went with her full pail across the court-yard, where they were still looking at the horse, the farmer said, “There—that is my sister. Rose, be[201] quick! and see what there is for supper. We have a relation for a guest. I will soon bring him in.”

“And the little girl who sang so well the second part,” asked the stranger, “is she, also, your sister?”

“No, that is only an adopted child. My father was her guardian.” The farmer very well knew, that such a benevolent action would give a good report to a family, and therefore he avoided calling Barefoot a servant.

She was secretly rejoiced that the stranger had noticed her. If he is prudent, she justly thought, he will inquire of me about Rose, and then if the knot is not tied, he can at least be preserved from ill fortune.

Rose carried up the supper, and the stranger, not knowing that he was expected, was much astonished that so excellent a guest’s repast could be prepared at such short notice. Rose made excuses, saying, “He was no doubt accustomed to much better fare at home.” She imagined, not unwisely, that any thing complimentary to one’s home, was always well received.

Barefoot remained in the kitchen to prepare every thing for Rose’s hand. Again and again she besought her to say who the stranger was. “Pray, Rose, tell me who he is? What is his name?” Rose gave her no answer. At length the mistress solved the riddle by saying, “You should know already—it is Farmer Landfried’s son John,[202] from Zusmarshofen. Is it not true, Amrie, that you have a remembrance from his mother?”

“Yes, yes!” said Barefoot. She was obliged to sink down upon the hearth; her knees wholly failed her; she would otherwise have fallen. How wonderful was it all! He was the son of her first benefactress! “Now I must indeed help him,” she said to herself, “and if the whole village should stone me for it, I can endure it.”

The stranger went forth; they would have followed him, but upon the steps he turned again and said, “My pipe has gone out. I would rather kindle it myself with a coal in the kitchen.” Rose pressed in before him, and standing exactly before Amrie, who sat by the fire, she gave him a coal with the tongs.

Late in the night when all were asleep, Barefoot left the house, and ran up and down through the village, seeking some one whom she could trust to warn John. But she knew no one. “Hold! There dwells the Sacristan—but he is an enemy to Farmer Rodel, and would bring out all the scandal. Go not to an enemy of thy master, much less of thy own, and thou hast enemies enough since the sitting of the parish council about Dami! Ah, Dami? He can do it. Why not? One man can speak to another. He can reveal all. Then John—that is his name—will not forget the service—then Dami will have an advocate. A good one—a man—perhaps a whole family. Then he will succeed.[203] Ah, no! Dami dare not show himself in the village. Was he not expelled? But there is Mathew? He can do it. Perhaps Dami may.”

Thus her thoughts wandered,—swift,—as she herself ran through the fields, not knowing where; and it was frightful to her, as it always is to those who know nothing of the world or of themselves. She was frightened at every sound; the frogs in the pond croaked fearfully; the grasshoppers in the meadow chirped scornfully, and the trees stood, so black in the dark night. Towards Endringen there had been a thunder-storm, and flying clouds hastened across the sky, through which blinked the stars. Barefoot hastened from the fields into the forest. She would go to Dami. She must at least speak with some one. She must hear a human voice. “How dark it is in the forest! Was that a bird that twittered? Like the black-bird when he at evening flies home and sings, ‘I come, come, come, come home; come quick, come quick.’ And now the nightingale struck in—so breathless, so from the inmost heart—welling, sparkling, softly rippling, like a wood fountain, that from the deepest source wells forth.”

The longer she wandered, the more she became involved in the wreaths and sprays that wound confusedly about her feet in the wood, as her plans became confused in her head. “No,” she said at last, “it will come to nothing—you had better go home.” She turned, but wandered long[204] after in the fields. She no longer believed in wandering lights, “Will-o’-the-wisp,” but to-night it seemed to her that she was led hither and thither, and impelled to follow them. She began to feel that she had been all night barefoot in the night dew, and that fever burnt in her cheeks. Bathed in perspiration, she reached at last her bedroom.

IN the morning when Barefoot awoke, she saw the necklace which had been given to her by the wife of Farmer Landfried, John’s mother, lying upon her bed. After some moments she recollected that she had taken it out last evening, and looked at it for a long time. When she attempted to rise, she found that she could scarcely move. She felt as though all her limbs were broken. She clasped her hands together, “Oh, not now!” she cried. “Oh, God forbid that I should be ill to-day! I have no time! I cannot be ill to-day!”

As in scorn of her body, and exerting a powerful will she arose—but when she looked in her little glass she started back, shocked at looking so ill. Her whole cheek was swollen. “This is thy punishment,” she cried, “for running about the fields all night, and for wishing to take bad men into thy council.” She struck as for punishment her painful cheek, and then she bound it up and went about her work.

When her mistress saw how ill she was, she[206] advised her to go to bed again, but Rose scolded and said, it was only ill-nature in Barefoot to be ill now, when she knew there was so much for her to do. Barefoot was silent, but afterwards, when she was in the stable putting clover in the rack for her cow, a cheerful voice said, “Good-morning—so early at work!” It was his voice.

“Only a little,” she said, and bit her lip with vexation that she was so disfigured, it would be impossible for him to recognize her.

As she was milking, John asked her many questions. “Whether the cows yielded much milk, if it was sold, or if they made butter? If any one in the house kept the accounts, etc.?”

Barefoot trembled. It was now in her power, merely by only telling the truth, to rid herself of her rival. But how strangely interwoven are the threads of our actions! She was ashamed to speak ill of those with whom she lived, although it was only of Rose she could say any thing. The others were good. She knew also, that a servant should not speak of the interior of the house. She merely said, “It does not become a servant, to judge his master’s family; good-hearted they all are,” she added, with an inward sense of justice, for, in fact, Rose was so, in spite of her violent and overbearing temper. Now it[207] occurred to her, that if she were to tell him exactly what Rose was, he would immediately depart. He would be saved from Rose, but he would be gone forever. She went on to say, “You appear to be prudent, as your parents also are, and you know you cannot form a judgment even of an animal in one day. I think you should remain a little longer, and we can learn to know each other better; and if I can serve you in any way, I will not fail to do so. I know not, indeed, why you ask me so many questions.”

Barefoot started, so that the cow drew back from her, and nearly overturned the milk-pail.

John put his hand in his pocket, but suffered the money he was going to draw out to fall back again.

“I will say something more to you,” said Amrie, as she turned to another cow—“the Sacristan is an enemy to this family, which you ought to know, if he should say any thing about them.”

“Ah, yes, I see. But one may talk safely with you. You have a swollen face, I see, and your head bound up; that will do you no good so long as you go barefoot.”

“I am used to it,” said Barefoot. “But I will follow your advice. I thank you.”

They heard steps approaching. “We will[208] speak to each other again,” said the young man as he went from the stable.

“Thank you, swelled-cheeks,” cried Amrie after he had gone, “you have become a mask for me; under your disguise I can speak to him as they do in the carnival, without being known.”

It was wonderful how this inward joy had driven away the fever; she felt weary, inexpressibly weary, and it was with mingled pleasure and sorrow that she saw one of the servants getting ready the Berner wagon, and heard that the farmer was going away directly with the stranger. She went into the kitchen, and there heard the farmer in the next room say, “If you are going to ride, John, Rose can go with me in the chaise, and you can ride by the side.”

“Oh, nonsense! When a cousin is here, you may surely make a holiday,” urged the farmer. He wished John to be seen with Rose as they passed by Farmer Furchils, that he might not cherish any hope for one of his daughters; at the same time, he knew that a little excursion in the country would bring the young people more together than a whole week spent in the house.[209] John was silent, and the farmer in his anxiety touched his shoulder and said, in an undertone, “Speak to her. If you ask her, she will go.”

“I think,” said John, aloud, “that your sister is right, not to go driving about the country upon a week-day. I will put my horse with yours into the wagon, and we can see how they will go together, and by supper-time we shall return, if not before.”

Barefoot, who heard all this, bit her lips to keep from smiling at what John said. Ah, she thought, you have not yet put on the halter, to say nothing of the bridle, by which you would be led away, no more to return. She was obliged to take the band from her face; joy made her so warm.

This was a strange day in the house. Rose related, half pettishly, the curious questions John had asked her, and Amrie secretly rejoiced; all that he wished to know was of things which she could have answered for in herself. But of what use was all this? He did know her, and if he should inquire about her, she was only a poor orphan and a servant, and nothing could come from such circumstances. “He does not know thee,” she said sighing, “and he will not ask.”

In the morning when they both returned, Amrie had taken the cloth from her brow, although her chin and temple still retained the broad bandage.

[210]John appeared to have neither word nor glance for her. On the contrary, his dog kept close to her in the kitchen. She fed and stroked him and said, “Ah, yes, if thou couldst only speak, thou wouldst tell him all the truth.”

The dog laid his head in her lap, and looked into her face with soulful eyes; then shook his head, as though he would say, “It is hard that I cannot speak God’s truth.”

Barefoot went into the nursery and sang to the children, who were, indeed, asleep; but she sang all her songs, and the waltz that she had once danced with John, she repeated the oftenest. John listened embarrassed, and betrayed his absence in his conversation. Rose went into the chamber and told Amrie to be silent.

Late in the evening, as Barefoot was carrying water to Mariann, and was near the house of her parents with the full pail upon her head, John, who was going to his inn, met her. “Good-evening,” said Amrie, in a low voice.

“Only too many. But Rose certainly only said it, because she thought it a disgrace to the village[211] to have many poor. She is good-natured you may readily believe, and gives willingly.”

“You are a good advocate. But do not stand still with that heavy pail. May I go with you?”

“You are right, you are going upon a good errand, and are protected. Beside, you need not be afraid of me.”

“I am not afraid of any one, and least so of you. I have seen to-day that you are good.”

“When you advised me how to get rid of my swelled face. It has helped me. I now wear shoes.”

“That is right that you take advice so readily,” said John much pleased, and the dog appeared to remark his satisfaction, for he jumped upon Amrie and licked her hand.

“No! let him stay,” said Barefoot, “we are already good friends. He has been with me in the kitchen; all dogs love me and my brother.”

“Yes,—and might I venture to ask a favor of you; you would earn a reward from heaven, if you would take him as a servant. He would serve you faithfully.”

[212]“We have little wood, and, indeed, no coalery. He would suit me better as a herdsman.”

Amrie went in to place the water, lay up the fire again, and to make Mariann’s bed afresh for her. When she came out John was waiting for her, and the dog sprang to meet her. They stood long together under the service-tree, whose branches rocked, and whose leaves whispered above them, and they talked of many things. John praised her sense and prudence, and at length said, “If you wished to change your service, you would just suit my mother.”

“That is the greatest praise a man could give me,” said Barefoot. “I have already a remembrance from her.” She related to him the circumstance that took place in her childhood, and they both laughed, when she said, “Dami never would forget that his mother had promised him a pair of leather breeches.”

They walked back together into the village, and John gave her his hand when he wished her good-night! He went reflecting with confused thoughts to his lodgings in the Heathscock Inn.

Barefoot found, the next morning, that her swollen cheek had vanished as though under a charm. Cheerful songs were heard all day through[213] house and court, stall and shed. To-day something must be decided. To-day John must declare himself. Rodel would not allow his sister to be any longer the subject of remark, when, perhaps, nothing might result from it.

Indeed, the whole day, John sat in the house with Rose, who was sewing upon a man’s shirt. Towards evening the farmer’s father and mother-in-law and some other friends came in.

In the kitchen the roast meat hissed, the pine wood snapped, and Barefoot’s cheeks burned with the fire from the hearth, fanned by the deeper heat of inward burning. Raven Zacky went up and down, in and out, as though full of business, and smoked Farmer Rodel’s pipe as though he had been at home.

It had become night again, and many lights were burning throughout the house. Rose, gayly dressed, went from parlor to kitchen, but did not prepare any thing. An old woman who had formerly been cook in the city, was hired to get ready the supper. All was now ready.

The young farmer’s wife said to Barefoot, “Now go up and put on your Sunday dress.”

Amrie went into her chamber, and weary to death, she threw herself down for a minute upon her trunk. Oh, she was so weary, so tired, so discouraged. Could she only fall asleep and never wake again! But her duty summoned her, and scarcely had she taken her Sunday dress in her hand, when joy awoke in her heart, and the glow from the evening sky which threw a clear beam into the humble garret room, trembled upon the heightened color of Amrie’s cheek.

“Put on your Sunday dress.” She had only one, and that was the dress she had worn at the wedding in Endringen. Every fold and rustle of that garment awoke the memory of the dancer, and the joy she had felt in that dance. But the night soon sank into the room, and as Amrie fastened her dress in the darkness, her joy vanished and timidity returned. She said to herself, “that as she dressed herself to do honor to John, she would show that she prized his family also,” and she put on the necklace, the present from his mother.

So Amrie came down from her chamber adorned as she was at the dance in Endringen. Rose cried, “What is this? Why have you dressed yourself thus? Why have you put your whole fortune on your back? Is it a servant who puts on a necklace? Go, instantly, and take it off.”

[215]“No! that I will not, for his mother gave it to me when I was a little child, and I wore it when I danced with him at Endringen.”

They heard a noise upon the steps, but Rose continued, “So you good-for-nothing creature; you, who would have perished in rags if we had not taken pity on you—and now you will take away my bridegroom from me!”

“Do not call him so before he is,” said Amrie with a strange, faltering voice; and the old cook cried from the kitchen, “Barefoot is right, a child should not be named before he is christened. He will meet with misfortune else.”

“Why should I cry?” said Amrie. “Indeed I have reason enough; but I will not.”

“Wait, I will show you what you must do,” shrieked Rose, beside herself—“so—and so.” She had torn Amrie down to the ground, and struck her in the face.

“Oh, let me go, let me go!” cried Amrie, “I will undress myself,”—but Rose without this promise had stopped, for, like a spectre sprung from the ground, John stood before her.

He was pale as death—his lips quivered, and he could not bring out a word. He laid his hand protectingly upon Barefoot, who was yet upon the ground.

Amrie was the first who spoke. She cried,[216] “John, believe me, she was never so before—never in her whole life. I am to blame.”

“Yes, you are to blame! But come, go with me. And wilt thou be mine? Wilt thou? I have at last found you without seeking for you. And now you will remain with me. Will you not, and be my wife? It is God’s will!”

What mortal eye has ever looked steadily upon the lightning from heaven? Wait for it ever so firmly, when it comes it blinds the human eye. There are lightnings also in the eyes of men, that no one can look upon. Such was the lightning now from Barefoot’s eyes. There are also emotions in the human heart that no one can at the moment understand—they rise far above the earth, and cannot be caught by others. A lightning glance of ecstasy, as though heaven opened upon her, flashed from Amrie’s eyes; then she covered her face with both hands, and the tears gushed forth between her fingers. John still held his hand upon her.

All the friends collected about them, and looked astonished at what was passing.

“What is the matter there with Barefoot? What has happened?” said Farmer Rodel, coming forward.

“So you are called Barefoot,” said John, laughing merrily; and again he urged, “Come, say only that you will be mine. Say it here where there are witnesses who will establish it. Say yes, and death only shall divide us.”

[217]“Yes—death only shall divide us,” and she threw herself upon his neck.

“Ah, yes,” said John, “that you need not have said. But I thank you, cousin, for your hospitality, which, if you will come to us, we will gladly return.” Then pressing with both hands his head, he cried,—“Oh, God—Oh, mother! mother! How wilt thou rejoice!”

“Go up, Barefoot, instantly, and take away your trunk. Nothing of yours shall remain another hour in the house,” said Rodel.

“Yes, but with less noise,” said John. “Come, Barefoot, I will go up with you. But tell me, what is your real name.”

“I was once to have had an Amrie! Huzza! Huzza! Come, I will see your chamber—the chamber where you have lived so long—but soon you shall have a larger house.”

The dog went round and round Rodel with bristling, erect hair; no doubt he saw that the farmer would willingly have throttled his master; and only when John and Barefoot reached the top of the stairs did Lux follow them.

John left the trunk, for he could not take it upon his horse, and packed every thing belonging to Barefoot in the sack inherited from her father; she all the time telling him what wonders had[218] already occurred in connection with that sack; but to her, all the world had come together in one moment, and was a thousand-yeared wonder. She looked on, astonished, when John seized her writing-book, preserved from her childhood, and with joy kissed it, exclaiming, “This will I bring to my mother; she foresaw this. Ah, there are yet miracles in the world!”

Barefoot asked no further. Had not all that had happened to her been a miracle? As she knew that Rose would instantly tear up her flowers and throw them into the street, she passed her hand caressingly over the plants, till she felt it cooled with the night dew. She went down with John, and as she was leaving the house, she felt a silent pressure of her hand in the dark. It was the farmer’s wife, thus bidding her farewell!

Upon the threshold where she had so often dreamily leaned, she laid her hand upon the door-post and said, “May God restore to this house all the good it has done to me, and forgive, as I do, all the ill.” But scarcely had she gone a few steps when she exclaimed, “Oh, dear! I have forgotten all my shoes. They stood upon an upper shelf.” The words were hardly out of her mouth, when the shoes came flying after her upon the street.

“Run in them to the devil,” cried a harsh voice, which was nevertheless the voice of Rose.

Barefoot gathered up her shoes, while John took the sack upon his back, and thus they went together[219] to the inn. The moon shone as clear as day, and the village lay quiet in the moonlight. Barefoot would not remain in the inn.

“I will remain with Mariann,” said Amrie. “It is my parents’ house, and you will leave your dog with me. Come, Lux, you will stay with me? I fear, to-night, they may do me some mischief.”

“I will watch before the house,” said John, “but it were better that we went on immediately; why would you remain here?”

“Oh! above all, I must go to Mariann. She has been a mother to me, and I have not seen her this whole day. I have done nothing for her to-day, and she is very ill. Ah, it is cruel that I must leave her all alone! But what can I do? come with me to her.”

They went hand in hand together, through the sleeping moonshine. Not many steps from her parents’ house, Amrie stood still and said, “Look! here thy mother gave me the necklace and a kiss.”

“Ah! here is another, and another!” Blessedly the lovers embraced each other. The service-tree rustled all its leaves above them, and from the forest the nightingales’ sweetest tones joined in the harmony.

“Ah! that is enough. Now you must go with me to Mariann. Oh, how she will rejoice, as from the seventh heaven!”

[220]They went into the house together. When Amrie opened the door of the room, the moonbeam as the sun once before shone upon the head of the angel upon the stove, and it appeared to smile upon them. Barefoot cried with loud joyful voice: “Mariann! Mariann! Wake up! Here is joy—blessing and joy—Wake up! Wake up!”

The old woman arose in her bed. The moonbeam fell upon her face and neck. She opened her eyes wide and asked, “What is it? What is it? Who calls?”

“My John,” shrieked the old woman. “My John! Oh, God, my son? How long—how long! I have thee! I have thee! I thank thee, oh! my God! A thousand and a thousand times! Oh, my child, I see thee at last! I see thee with a thousand eyes, a thousand times over! There, there thy hand! Come close, come close! There in that chest is thy portion! Take my hand! My son! My son! Yes, yes—it is my son! John, my son, my dear son!” She laughed convulsively, and fell back in her bed. Amrie and John had been kneeling at her bedside, and as they rose and bent over her, the old woman breathed no more.

“Oh, God, she is dead! Joy has killed her,” cried Amrie. “She took thee for her own son. She died happy, then! God be praised! Oh, how every thing goes! All in this world!”

[221]She sank down by the bed and wept and sobbed bitterly. At length John raised her up, and Barefoot closed the eyes of the dead. They stood long, silently together, by the bed. Then Amrie said, “I will wake some one in the village to watch by her. How good God has been. She had no one to take care of her after I had gone, and God has given her the greatest joy in her last moment. Oh, how long she had waited for this joy!”

“Yes! But now you can stay here no longer,” said John. “Now you will come with me, and we will go on immediately.”

Barefoot waked the wife of the Sacristan, and sent her to Mariann. She was herself so wonderfully self-possessed, that she charged the woman to have Mariann’s flowers planted upon her grave, and not to forget to place her hymn-book, and that of her son, beneath her head, as Amrie had always promised her.

As at last every thing was placed in order, she turned to John and said, “Now all is ready, but forgive me, thou good soul, that I have brought you to this miserable scene, and forgive me also, that I am now so sad. I see that it is all good, and that God has done all for the best, but the shock is yet in all my limbs. I tremble from head to foot—for death is a frightful thing. You would not believe how much my thoughts and my fears have dwelt upon it. But now it is all well. I shall soon again be cheerful, for am I not the happiest bride on earth?”

[222]“Yes, you are right!” said John. “But come, now we will go. Will you sit with me upon the horse?”

“And, oh, for Farmer Rodel. Did you know he sent to Lauterbach for a white horse, to induce you to come to the house? Gee, whoa! White horse, go again home!” she cried, almost cheerful again. And so from thought and emotion, they returned again to common every-day life, and learnt again to know and feel the blessedness of their lot!

“IS it true? Is it not a dream? Are we together, and awake, and will the morning come again, and then the day, and so on forever?” Thus spoke Barefoot to Lux, who remained by her side while John was in the stable saddling the horse. He came out, put the sack upon the horse, and said, “I will sit upon it, and you shall sit before me on the saddle.”

Having swung himself upon the saddle, he said, “Now put your foot on mine, stand firmly upon it, and give me both your hands.” She swung herself lightly up, he raised, and kissing her, said,—“Now you are in my power, I can do with you what I please.”

Silently they rode out of the village. In the last house a light was burning; there was the sexton’s[224] wife watching by the dead Mariann. John suffered Amrie to weep undisturbed. As they rode across the Holden Meadow, Amrie first spoke.

“Here,” she said, “I once kept the geese, and here I gave your father water from the spring. God bless thee, thou wild pear-tree, and you fields and forests! It seems to me all a dream, and forgive me, dear John, that I do not rejoice. I cannot yet, and dare not, when I think that my friend is lying there dead. It is a sin to rejoice, and a sin not to rejoice. Do you know, John, what I say to myself? when a year is past I shall be so happy—when the year is over, oh! how beautiful it will be! But no! to-day is beautiful, I will be happy to-day—it is just. Now, we will ride into Heaven! Ah, what dreams I have had there upon the Holder Common; that the cuckoo was perhaps an enchanted prince, and now I sit upon your horse, and have become the salt duchess. I know they joke about it in Holdenbrunn, but I am glad you called me salt duchess. Do you know the history of the saying, ‘As dear as salt’?”

“There was once a king who asked his daughter one day, ‘How much do you love me?’ and she answered, ‘I love thee as dear—as dear as salt.’

“The king said, ‘That is a stupid answer,’ and was angry at it. Not a long time after the king gave a great feast, and the daughter contrived that[225] all the dishes should come upon the table unsalted. Of course, nothing tasted well, and the king asked his daughter, ‘How the dinner came to be so badly cooked?’

“She said, ‘Because the salt failed; there was no salt. You see now that I was right when I said I loved you as dear as salt!’ The king was satisfied, and to this day we say as dear as salt.

“This story Mariann told me. Alas! she can never tell me any more. There she lies dead! Hark! there sings the nightingale. Oh! so happy! I will think no more of sorrow. I will be thy salt duchess, John. Yes, I am happy! Mariann said, ‘God rejoices when people are happy, as parents are happy to see their children dance and sing.’ We have danced already; come now, we will sing. Turn a little to the left in the forest; we will ride to my brother. Sing, nightingale, we will sing with you.”

Both sang together all their songs, melancholy and lively, without ceasing, and Barefoot sang the second part as well as the first. But most often they sang the Landler, the waltz they had danced together three times at Endringen, and whenever they paused, they told each other how often,[226] when they were far off, they had thought of each other.

John said, “It has been impossible for me to get that waltz out of my head, for with it you have always danced there. But I was not willing to have a servant for my wife, for I must tell you that I am proud.”

John now told her how he had struggled with himself to forget her, and how delightful it was now, that time was all over. Then he told her he had been twice to his mother’s native village to bring home a wife from there; but all in vain, for since he met her that day at the entrance of Endringen, his heart had been wholly hers; but as he heard she was a servant, he would not make himself known to her.

Barefoot told him how Rose had behaved to her at the wedding in Endringen, and at that time she was first wounded at hearing her say, “It is only our servant!”

After much mutual confidence, John cried, “I could go mad when I think how different it might have been. How could I have taken any but yourself homewards? How could it have been possible?”

“Do not think too often how it could have been different, or so and so, otherwise. As it is, it is[227] right, and must be right; be it for joy or sorrow. God has willed it as it is, and now it depends on us to make it for the best.”

“Yes,” said John, “if I shut my eyes and listen to you, I think I hear my mother; she would have said exactly these words. Your voice is also like hers.”

And after her peculiar manner, in the midst of security, although her life from her infancy had been filled with the seeds of wonder, she asked:

“That will not do; we must give him another name. Do you know what? Silver Trot.”

And now to the tune they had danced together, John sang over and over again the one word “Silver-trot, silver-trot, silver-trot!” Barefoot sang it with him, and when they no longer sang words that had any meaning, their merriment was pure, full, unlimited; they expressed their inward joy by outward jubilee, by joddling together, for there are bell-tones in the soul that have no connected melody, but include in themselves every sound of joy; and hover here and there, over and above us, and rock together the hearts of the living. Again they found words. John sang,—

There were pure sounds in the forest, where the moonbeams played upon the branches and hung upon the stems, and two joyful human children emulating and contending with the nightingale.

Not far off, by the charcoal-heap, sat Dami in the quiet night, listening to the charcoal-burner, who related to him wonderful histories from past times, when the trees stood so closely together that a squirrel could run from the Neckar to the Bodensee, from tree to tree, without once touching the ground. Then he told him the history of a rider upon a white horse, a messenger from the old heathen gods, who diffused over the earth beauty and splendor, and poured out joy to men.

There are proverbs and fables that influence the soul, as looking long into an intense fire affects the eye. Varied colors play around, are extinguished, and again break out; but when we turn from the flame, the night is darker than before.

Thus listened Dami, and thus he looked around,[229] while Mathew in a monotonous voice related his stories. He held in, for down the hill came a white horse with sweet and pleasant music accompanying him. “Has the world of wonders come to us?” Nearer came the horse, and there sat upon him a wonderful rider, broad and tall, and apparently with two heads. It came always nearer, and the music changed to a man’s and a woman’s voice, crying, “Dami, Dami, Dami!”

Both would have sunk into the ground from fright; they could not stir, but the horse was there, and now the strange figure alighted.

Dami had nothing to say, but stroked sometimes the horse and sometimes the dog, and only nodded when John told him he would take him for his dairyman; that he should have the care of thirty cows, and learn to make butter and cheese.

“That will be coming out of darkness into the light,” said Barefoot. “We could make a riddle out of that, Dami.”

At last Dami recovered his speech, “not forgetting a pair of leather breeches also,” he said. All laughed, and he declared that John’s mother had promised him a pair of these breeches.

“In the mean time take my pipe,” said John,—“the pipe of a brother-in-law,”—and he gave him his pipe.

How happy was Dami, as he sprang into the log-hut with his silver-mounted pipe; but who would have believed that he could have made so clever a joke. After a moment he came back with the hat and long coat of Mathew on, and a lighted torch in each hand. With the utmost gravity of tone and manner, he addressed the betrothed lovers,—

“John, I have brought a couple of torches with which to light you home. How came you to think you could take my sister from me? I am her adult brother; you must receive her from me, and until I say yes, all goes for nothing.”

Amrie laughed gayly, and John made a formal request to Dami for the hand of his sister. Dami would have carried the joke still further, for he was proud of the part in which he had succeeded so well; but Amrie knew that he could not be depended upon, and that he would commit some folly. She had seen already that he had stretched his hand more than once towards John’s watch-seals, and had drawn it back again without touching them. She spoke, therefore, in a severe tone, as to a young child,—

Dami assumed again his own character, and said to John, “It is all right you have a steel-bound wife, and I a silver-bound pipe.” As nobody laughed, he added,—“Ah, brother-in-law, you did[231] not know that you had so wise a relation. What say you, brother-in-law? We are both of one stock, brother.” It seemed in his joy that he could not say brother-in-law too often.

At length they mounted, and when they had ridden a short distance, Dami called after them,—

“Brother, don’t forget my leather breeches!” Merry laughter answered him, and then again the music of their songs, as the lovers rode on in the moonlight.

THERE is no living an equal, uniform life. Night and day, rest and motion, wild tumult and stagnant repose, and all the changes of the season; thus it is in the life of nature; thus it is in the human heart, and it is well for that heart, if in all its changes, it does not wander from its true path.

It was broad daylight when the lovers reached the town. A long time before, when they first met a person walking, they both dismounted; they felt that their appearance was singular, and that first man, a messenger from memory, reminded them that they must come out of Eden and assume again the order of humanity and custom. John led the horse in one hand, and gave the other to Amrie, and thus they silently entered the town. When they looked at each other, their faces shone like those of children just awaked from sleep, but when they looked away, or down upon themselves, they were anxious about what should next occur.

As though she had already talked with John,[233] and he had prudently reflected upon the subject, Amrie said,—

“Indeed, it would have been wiser if we had calmly arranged matters beforehand. If you had gone home, and I, in the mean time, had remained somewhere,—if nowhere else, with Mathew the coal-burner in the forest,—and you had come for me with your mother, or written to me, and I could have followed with my Dami. But do you know what I think?”

“I think regret is the stupidest thing one can allow to come over him. Do what we may, we cannot make yesterday to-day. What we did in the jubilee of our hearts was right, and must remain right; we must not, now that we are a little more sober, reproach ourselves for it; we must now reflect how we can make the future good and useful to us. You are a sensible man, and you will see that it is best to consider and tell me every thing freely. Say what you may, you will not distress me; but if you conceal any thing from me, it will distress me sorely. Say, do you repent what we have done?”

“Well, now tell me this, it is a simple word. Take away the first letter and you might as well lose your head; put it back again, and it is all right.”

[234]“That is too easy,” said Barefoot. “It is childish; it is rue and true,” and as the larks began to sing, they also sang riddle-songs with them. Then John sang:

They entered the door of the first inn they came to, and as John called for coffee, Amrie said:

“How beautifully is every thing ordered in this world! Here are people who have furnished a house with chairs and tables and benches; in the kitchen burns the fire, and there is coffee and milk and sugar, and a beautiful service for the table, and all for us, as though we had ordered it; then, as we go further we shall find the same; it is exactly as in a fairy tale,—‘Table be covered.’”

“But this belongs to it,” said John, taking a handful of money from his pocket. “Without this we could get nothing.”

“Ah, yes,” said Amrie, “upon these little wheels one can roll through the world. But tell me, John, did you ever in your life taste such good coffee: and this fresh, white bread! But you have ordered too much of it; what can we do with it? I can take the bread with me, but the coffee! Oh! what a good breakfast it would give many poor persons. We must leave it, and you must pay for it!”

“That cannot be helped,” said John. “One cannot calculate so exactly in the world.”

“Yes, yes, you are right. But I am not accustomed to the world; you must not take it ill if I say things that are not clever and sensible.”

Amrie rose soon from the table, and as she stood before the glass, she cried,—

“But I know you,” said John, “you are Amrie, and Barefoot, and Salt Duchess, and that is not all; you will soon have another name; Landfried is not bad.”

“There are some hard boards to bore through,” said John, “but they do not frighten me. Now lie down and sleep a little, while I look about for a Berner wagon; we cannot in the day-time ride on one horse; beside we need a wagon.”

“I could not sleep, and I must write a letter to Holdenbrunn; I am strong; and I have enjoyed much good there; I have also some directions to give.”

“Oh, well! get it over when I come back.” John went, and Amrie looked after him with somewhat troubled thoughts. “There he goes, and yet he belongs to me. Is it possible? is it true? is he mine? He does not look back. How proudly he goes, and the dog goes with him!”

Amrie made a sign to the dog; he came running back and jumped upon her. As they went into the house together, she said, “Yes, it was[237] good, it was right of thee to remain with me, that I might not be alone; but come in, I must write.”

She wrote a long letter to the Mayor of Holdenbrunn, thanking the whole parish for what they had done for her, and promising to take an orphan child from thence, when she was able. She besought the Mayor that Mariann’s hymn-book might be placed beneath her head. When she had sealed her letter, she pressed her lips upon it, and said, “Now I have done with all the living in Holdenbrunn.” But she tore her letter open again, for she thought it her duty to show John what she had written.

He was a long time gone, and Amrie blushed painfully when the landlady said to her,—

“Your husband has probably business in the town.” To hear John for the first time called her husband, sank deeply into her heart; she could not answer, and the hostess looked at her with astonishment. To escape her curious glances, Amrie went out and sat down upon a pile of boards; the dog sat opposite, waiting for John; she caressed him and looked deeply into his honest eyes. No animal seeks and bears the steady, penetrating eye of man, like the dog, but he also at last turns away.

Amrie went with the dog into the stable, where the horse was eating. “Yes, dear Silver Trot,”[238] she said, “enjoy thy breakfast and bring us well home, and God grant that all may be well!”

It was a long time before John came back; when at last she saw him, she ran to meet him, and said,—

“Promise me that if you have business again on the road, you will take me with you?”

“What! were you afraid? Did you think I had left you? Ah! what if I had left you sitting there, and had ridden off?”

Amrie trembled from head to foot. Then she said very seriously, “You are not witty, and if you intended by that a joke, it was dreadfully stupid. I pity you if you said it seriously. You would have done something very wicked if you would have ridden away and thought to have left me—you thought, perhaps, as you had a horse and money, that you were the master. No! your horse brought us here together; I consented to come with you; what would you think if I made such a joke, and said, ‘What if I left you sitting there!’ I pity you, that you could say it.”

“No! when I am offended I must say all that is in my mind. I know best when to be silent, for it is you who have offended me. If another had said any thing that was unjust, I should have turned from it; but in you I dare not leave a single shadow unobserved. To joke of our relation to[239] each other seems to me as profane as to play with the crucifix as if it were a doll.”

“I understand it well, as you will soon learn; but now no more of this; I have done; it is all well!”

This little difference showed both of them early, that with all their loving devotion, they must each respect the other. Amrie felt that she had been a little too warm, and John learnt that Amrie’s dependent condition, and her unbounded confidence and trust in him, must be no subjects of sport.

The few morning clouds soon were scattered by the penetrating beams of the sun, and Amrie was as gay as a child, when a pretty, green Berner wagon came to the door, with a round, cushioned seat. Before the horse was harnessed, she jumped in, and clapping her hands for joy, she said to John,—

“Now you must make me fly; I have ridden with you, I am going to drive with you, and nothing remains but to fly.”

It was a beautiful morning, and a well-built road. The horse found easy work, and the dog ran before them, barking for joy. After some time, Amrie said,—

“And so you are, and I shall ask no one’s leave,[240] and care not what they say. Thou, Heaven, and ye larks, and you trees, and fields, and hills,—look, this is my little wife! When she scolds she is just as dear as when the most beautiful things drop out of her mouth. Oh! my mother is a wise woman! Ah! she knows! She told me to observe how a woman appeared when she was angry, for then, all that is within comes out. That was a dear, sharp, cutting, beautiful, wicked little thing, that came out to-day when you were angry. Now I know you, and all the kindred, and I like them. Oh! thou wide, wide world, I thank you all,—all in the world; and I ask you, if so long as you have stood, you have ever seen such a dear little wife? Huzza! Huzza!”

When they met or passed anybody, John would cry, “See! this is my wife; look at her!” till Amrie besought him not to do it—when he said, “He could not for joy help it. I would call the whole world to rejoice with me—and I cannot tell how the men who are at work in the fields, or who are splitting wood, or doing any thing else, are not able to know how blessed I am.”

A poor woman came limping after them, and Amrie seized quickly a pair of her beloved shoes and threw them to her. The woman looked astonished, and nodded her thanks. Amrie felt for the first time in her life, that blessed emotion of giving away a thing which she valued herself. She never thought how much she had done for Mariann, but[241] that she had given her shoes, appeared to her the first benevolence of her heart. She was more pleased than the woman who had received the shoes; she smiled at herself, as though she had a secret in her soul that made her heart leap for joy, and when John asked, “What is the matter? why do you smile like a child in its sleep?” she said, “Ah! it is all like a dream. I can now make a present—and am going home in thought with that old woman, and can see how happy she will be.”

“Oh! how can you call it so, to give when one is happy? It is as though a full glass should overflow. I would give every thing away. I feel as you do, that I would call all men to be happy; I mean, I should like to feast them all. I think I am sitting at a long table, alone with you, but I cannot eat, I am satisfied.”

“Ah, that is well,” said John; “but do not throw away more of your shoes. When I look at them, I think how many beautiful long years you will wear them—how many beautiful long years you will run about in them, till they are worn out.”

“How came you to think of that? How many hundred times have I had the same thought, when I have looked at the shoes; but now tell[242] me something of your home, else I shall always chatter of myself.”

John did that willingly, and while he related, and Amrie listened with wide-opened eyes, there always moved throughout it in her imagination, the happy image of the old woman with the new shoes. After John had described his family, above all, he praised the cattle—“They are all so well fed, so healthy and round, that no drop of water will stand upon them.”

“I cannot understand,” said Amrie, “how I can be so rich. When I think of it, it seems as though I had slept all my life, and had just been waked. No, no! It cannot be so; I am frightened when I think of the responsibility I shall feel. Tell me, will not your mother help me; she is active yet, I hope? I do not know how I shall help giving every thing to the poor; but no—that must not be, for it is not mine.”

It is impossible to say with what joy the lovers went on. Every word they uttered made them happier. Amrie asked, “Have you swallows at your house?”

John answered, “Yes,” and added, “that they had also a stork’s nest upon the housetop.” This made Amrie completely happy. She imitated the chattering of the storks, and described, so as to make John laugh, the grave and earnest expression[243] of the stork, as he stood upon one leg and looked down into his house.

Was it by agreement, or was it the inward power of these moments of happiness, that they said nothing; that they did not appear to think of what lay before them,—their entrance into the parental house, till towards evening when they reached the district in which Zusmarshofen lay. But now as John began to meet peeple who knew him, greeted him, and looked at them curiously, he said to Amrie, “He had thought of two plans, as to the best way of proceeding. Either he would take her to his sister, who lived very near (they could see the church tower of the village behind that hill), and he would go alone to the house and make every thing known, or she should go immediately to his parents and offer herself as a servant.”

Amrie showed her decision and good sense as they analyzed these proceedings, and the objections to them. If she went first to the sister, she would have to win over a person who could, after all, not decide for them, and who, differing from them, might imbitter their future intercourse. It would also leave a report in the neighborhood, that she had not dared to venture into his house. The second plan was better, but it went against her whole soul, to enter his father’s house with a lie on her tongue. It was true, that his mother, many years before, had promised to take her into service, but[244] she could not now be in service, and it would be as a thief, that she would thus steal into her favor. Beside, in such a false position, under a mask, as it were, she could do nothing well. If she were placing a chair for his father, she should certainly throw it down, thinking she was deceiving him. And even if this did not happen, how must she appear to the other servants, when later they learnt that the mistress had smuggled herself into the house as a servant; and worse than all, she would not be able to speak a single word with him.

She concluded with these words,—“I have said all this, because you wished to know my opinion. When we consider any thing together, I must speak my mind openly and truly, but at the same time, whatever you wish, if you say so firmly, I shall do it, whether I agree with you in opinion or not. I shall follow you without contradiction whenever I know your wishes.”

“Yes, yes, you are right,” said John. “Neither of those roads was the true one. But we are now so near that we must decide upon something. Do you see that opening in the forest upon the mountain, where there is a little hut, and the cows as small as beetles? That is our early spring dairy. There I will place our Dami.”

Amrie exclaimed, astonished, “Ah! where will not men venture? But that must be good grassland.”

[245]“Yes; but if my father should give the farm to me, I shall introduce more stall-feeding. It is more profitable. But old people must remain by old customs. Ah! what am I tattling about, when we are so near. Ah! had we only thought sooner.”

“Keep only calm. We must calmly consider it,” said Amrie. “I have a trace of what to do, but it is not yet wholly clear.”

“No, you must consider also; perhaps you will hit upon something. It belongs to you to settle it. We are both in such embarrassment now, that we will pause, and perhaps we shall both think of something.”

“Something already occurs to me,” said John. “There, in the next house but one, lives a pastor I am well acquainted with; he will advise us for the best. Hold! This is better. I will remain in the valley, by the mill, and you shall go alone up to the farm to my parents, and tell them all, exactly, roundly, and fully, as it has happened. You will immediately gain my mother, and you are so sensible and discreet, that it will not be long before you will wind my father round your finger. This is the best plan. We shall not have to wait, nor to ask a stranger to come to our help. Do you agree to this, or will it be too much for you?”

“This is exactly my thought. Now we have nothing more to consider. It is settled as though[246] it were written down and carried out. And now, quick work proves the master. Oh, you do not know what a dear, good, sensible, precious fellow you are!”

“No, you are the sensible one. But it is all settled, and we are both but one brave fellow together. That will we remain. Here, give me your hand. There! So! This meadow is our first field. Thank God, little wife, now you are at home. And, huzza! there is our stork; he flies home. Stork! stork! Say ‘thank God here is the new mistress!’ Later I will tell you more. Now, Amrie, do not be too long up there, and immediately send some one to the mill. If the stable-boy is at home, send him; he can spring like a hare. Now, do you see the house with the stork’s nest on the roof, and the two barns on the hill, at the left from the wood? There is a linden before it. Do you see it?”

John alighted and helped Amrie from the wagon. She held the necklace, which she had put in her pocket, like a rosary, between her folded hands, and prayed softly. John also took off his hat, and his lips moved.

Neither spake another word. Amrie went on before, while John stood a long time leaning against his horse, and looking after her. She[247] turned and tried to drive the dog back, who had followed her. He would not go back, but ran aside into a field, and followed her again. John whistled, and then first the animal ran back to him.

John went to the mill and waited there. They told him that his father had been there about an hour before, to wait for him, and had again returned home. John rejoiced that Amrie would meet both parents at home. The people at the mill could not tell what troubled John, that he should wait there and not say a word. He went into the house—then out again. He went part of the way to the farm—then turned back again; was full of anxiety, counting the steps Amrie had to take. Now she was at this field, now at that. Now she had reached the beech-hedge—now she was speaking with his parents. Thus he thought and trembled.

AMRIE in the mean time went on, lost in dreamy thoughts. She looked inquiringly up at the trees that stood so calmly upon the place, and that will stand, she thought, and look down upon thee for years; many years, perhaps thy whole life, and be thy life’s companions! Meanwhile, what will be thy life’s experience?

Amrie was too old to look for support in the outward world, and it was long since she had asked the service-tree for advice. She now tried to turn her thoughts from all surrounding objects; and yet she must look at the fields that would soon be her own, and she could not help thinking of what was to come; of her entrance and reception, question and answer; the confusion of a thousand possibilities whirled around, and the Silver-trot waltz played itself in her head. She said at last, half aloud, “What is the use of all this thinking? When the music plays I must dance, be it hop or waltz. I know not how I shall move my feet;[249] they must go of themselves. I cannot think—I will not think, that perhaps in an hour I may be coming this way again, the heart broken in my body! And yet I must move on, step after step! Enough! Now let whatever will, come; I am prepared.”

There was more within than this out-spoken resolution; she had not, in vain, from her childhood, solved riddles, and from day to day had to wrestle with life; the whole power of that, which through effort she had become, rested quiet and secure within her mind. Without further question, as one goes to meet a necessity, calm in her self-possession she went on with courageous and firm steps.

She had not gone far when she saw an old man sitting with a red-thorn stick between his feet, and his hands and chin resting upon it.

“Ah! So it is,” laughed the old man. “Thirty years ago I should have been delighted. Then, if a pretty girl had said that, I had sprung like a colt.”

“But I should not have said it to one who could spring like a colt,” laughed Amrie.

“You are rich,” said the old man, to whom an[250] idle conversation, on a warm day, appeared agreeable; and he took with satisfaction a pinch from his box.

“Your teeth are worth ten thousand gulden. I know many who would give ten thousand gulden to have them in their mouths.”

Amrie helped the old man carefully to rise, when he said, “You are strong.” He had made himself heavier and more helpless than he really was. On the way he asked her, “To whom was her errand at the farm?”

“If you would ask a present, turn immediately back; the wife would willingly give, but she is mistress of nothing. The farmer is tough. He has a ramrod in his neck, and a stiff thumb to that.”

“I do not want any thing of them, but on the contrary, I take them something,” said Amrie.

They met an old man with a scythe on his shoulder, going to the field, and Amrie’s companion asked him, at the same time winking cunningly, “Whether the old miser, Farmer Landfried, was at home?”

[251]“I believe so, but I am not certain,” said the old man with the scythe; and as he went on, Amrie saw a certain twinkling in his eyes. She looked steadily in the face of her companion, and suddenly she recognized through the fallen features the man to whom she had once given water to drink upon the Holder Meadow. “Wait,” she said softly to herself, “I have caught you,” and aloud, “It is wrong of you to speak thus of the farmer to a stranger like myself, that you do not know, and that may perhaps be a relation of his. What you say of him may be only slander; and should he appear close, he certainly has a good heart, and does not choose to ring the great bell to tell the good he does. Beside, one who has such good, honorable children, must be honorable himself. It may be also, that before the world he makes himself worse than he is, because it is not worth the trouble to try to please others; and I am of the same opinion.”

“No, part of the way with the son of your farmer. He took me up. He is a thoroughly brave, honest young man.”

They had now entered the farm-yard, when the old man went with Amrie into the house, and called, “Mother, where are you?”

The mother came out of her chamber. Amrie trembled, and would gladly have fallen on her neck; but she could not, she durst not, and the old man said, with a smothered laugh, “Only think, wife, here is a girl from Holdenbrunn, and she has something to say to Farmer Landfried and his wife, but she will not tell me a word of it. Now you tell her what my name is.”

“Why, that is the farmer himself,” said his wife; and, as a sign of welcome, she took his hat and hung it on the stove-handle.

“Do you see?” said the old man to Amrie.—“Now you may say all you please.”

“Sit down,” said the mother, and gave Amrie a chair. Breathing with difficulty she began:

“You may believe me, that no child could think more of you than I have, both in times past, and for the last few days. Do you remember Josenhans, at the fish-pond, where the road turns towards Endringen?”

“Well, if it did not seem to me as though I knew you,” said the farmer’s wife. “Bless you, my child.” She reached her her hand. “You have[253] grown up a strong, fine girl. But tell me what has brought you so far?”

“She came part of the way with our John,” said the old man. “He will soon follow.”

His wife was startled. She seemed to anticipate something, and reminded her husband that she had thought of the Josenhans children at the moment John rode away.

“I have a remembrance from both of you,” said Amrie, and took the necklace and a carefully folded gold piece from her pocket. “That necklace you gave me the last time you were in the place.”

“And there,” continued Amrie, giving him the gilded groschen, “is the gold piece you presented me when I kept the geese upon Holder Common, and gave you water from the spring.”

“Yes, yes, that is all right,” said the old man. “But what is all this? What is given you, you may keep.”

Amrie stood up and said, “I have a request to make. Suffer me for two minutes to speak freely. May I?”

“Look! Your son John would have brought me to you as a servant. Formerly I would rather have served you than another, rather here than elsewhere; but now, it would have been dishonorable[254] in me towards those to whom I wish to be open and honorable during my whole life long. I could not come with a lie in my mouth, when all should be as clear as sunlight. In one word, John and I have taken each other with our whole hearts’ choice, and he wishes me to be his wife!”

“Ah, ha!” cried the old man, and jumped from his chair, so that one could see his former helplessness was put on. “Ah, ha,” he cried again, as though a twinge of gout seized him. But his wife held him firmly by the hand and said, “Let her go on.”

And Amrie continued, “Believe me, I have sense enough to know that no one can accept a daughter-in-law from compassion. You might make me a present; but to make one a daughter-in-law out of pity! that, no one could do. Neither would I have it so. I have no money. Yes, I have that groschen that you gave me on the Holder Common. I have it yet, because no one would take it for a groschen,” she said, turning to the farmer who smiled furtively. “I have absolutely nothing! And yet more, I have a brother, for whom, though he is strong and healthy, I must provide. I have also kept the geese, and have been less considered than any girl in the village. That is all! No one can say the smallest thing against my character. That is again all! In what men receive from God alone, I would say to any princess, that I placed myself no hair’s-breadth behind her; ah, if she had[255] seven golden crowns upon her head—I should rather another spoke for me. I speak not willingly for myself; but my whole life long, I have had to be the only protector of my character, and I do it to-day for the last time, when the decision must be made between my life or death!

“Do not misunderstand me. If you reject me, I shall go calmly away. I shall do no harm to myself; neither spring into the water, nor hang myself on a tree. I shall seek another service, and thank God that a good man would have had me for his wife—and will believe that it is God’s will that it shall not be.” Amrie’s voice trembled, and her form seemed taller than before. But as she now sank down she cried, “Examine yourselves. Ask your deepest consciousness if it be God’s will, however you decide.”

For a moment neither spoke. At length the old man said, “You can preach like any parson.” The mother dried her eyes with her apron and said, “Why not? Pastors have but one brain and one heart.”

“As for you,” said the old man contemptuously, “you are something of a parson yourself. With a couple of soft speeches they can do what they please with you.”

“And with you, they will never be able to do any thing till you die,” said his wife, with spirit.

“See!” stormed the old man. “Do you see, you saint from the Unterland, you bring fine peace[256] into our house. You have already made my wife take your part against myself; now, you may both wait till I am dead—then you may do as you please.”

“No!” cried Amrie, “that I will never do. John shall never have me for his wife without your blessing; much less will I have the sin in both our hearts, of waiting for your death. I have scarcely known my parents; I cannot remember them, but I love them as we love God, whom we have never seen. And I know what death is. Last night I closed the eyes of Brown Mariann, for whom, during my whole life, I have done what I could; what she would have me do; but now that she is dead, I often think how reluctantly I sometimes did it, and how much more I might have done for her. It is all over now; she lies there in her dark bed; I can do nothing more for her, nor ask her forgiveness. Yes, I know what death is, and I will not”—

“But I will!” shrieked the old man, and clinched his fists and ground his teeth. “But I will!” he cried again. “You shall remain and belong to us! And now let what will come. Let them say what they will; you, and you alone, shall have my John.”

The wife threw her arms about his neck and embraced him. The old man, unaccustomed to such demonstration, cried out, “What are you doing?”

[257]“Giving you a kiss, for you deserve one. You are better than you would make us believe.”

The old man, who, during the whole time, held a pinch of snuff between his fingers, which he would not waste, now took it hastily, and said, “Just as you like; but there is one younger, and from her it will taste better. Come here, you disguised parson.”

“That you need not know. You can give me one of your own choosing; you know which.”

In answer, Amrie flew to his arms. “And I, am not I to be consulted?” said the mother in pure joy, almost beside herself.

The old man took Amrie by the hand, and said, in a gay sportive tone, “Worthy Catharina, now named Landfried, will you accept—what is your real name,” he whispered, “your baptismal name?”

“Will you accept,” he continued, addressing his wife, “Amrie Josenhans, of Holdenbrunn, for your daughter, and treat her as you do your husband; never let her say a word, feed her badly, scold and oppress her—and in short, treat her as one of the family.”

A total change had come over the old man; he[258] seemed to have lost his senses; and while Amrie remained in the arms of her mother, and could not tear herself away, he struck his thorn-staff upon the table, and cried, “Where is that good-for-nothing boy, John? He hangs his bride about our necks, while he is roving about the country.”

Amrie, then, loosing herself from her mother, said, “that the stable-boy should be sent to the mill, where John was waiting.”

The old man said, “He must at least be left three hours to gape away the time there as a punishment for sheltering himself like a coward behind her apron. When he did come, they would put a woman’s cap on his head; and, indeed, he was not wanted, for he felt much inclined to keep the bride for himself.”

The mother, however, had slipped out, and sent the swift-footed stable-boy to the mill.

They now thought that Amrie must be hungry. The mother proposed an omelet, and Amrie begged that she might be permitted to kindle the first fire in the house, that was to prepare any thing for herself, and also cook something for her parents.

They consented, and both the old people went into the kitchen with her, where she set about every thing so handily; saw with a glance where every thing was kept, and had indeed so few questions to ask, and did her work so quickly and gracefully, that the old man nudged his wife and said, “She has it all by heart, and at her fingers’ ends, like the new schoolmaster.”

[259]All three stood before the clear blazing fire, when John came in. Brighter than the flame upon the hearth, shone their heart-felt happiness from the eyes of all. The hearth with its bright flame was a sacred altar, around which stood four grateful and happy people.

AMRIE knew so well how to make herself at home in the house of John’s parents, that, on the second day, it seemed as though from her childhood she had grown up there. The old man clattered after her, and observed how handily and neatly she took hold of every thing, and how she finished her work without haste and without rest.

There are people, who, if they were to do the smallest thing, to fetch a plate or jug, they disturb the thoughts of all who are sitting near; they draw, as it were, all thoughts and glances after them. Amrie, on the contrary, accomplished every thing so quietly, that she made others feel more at ease, and of course more grateful for all she did for them.

How often had the old farmer scolded, because, when salt was needed, some one had to get up from the table to fetch it! Amrie, as soon as the table-cloth was spread, placed the salt-cellar upon the table. As the old farmer praised her for it, his wife said, smiling, “One would think that you now[261] for the first time began to live, that nothing had been salted for you before.” Then John told them that Amrie was called the Salt Duchess, and related the story of the king and his daughter.

They had now a happy life together in the house, in the farm-yard and in the fields. The farmer said he had not for years tasted food as good as that prepared by Amrie. He wished for something three and four times a day, at quite unusual hours, and she was obliged to sit by and see him eat.

The mother took Amrie with quiet and secret satisfaction into the milk-cellar and store-rooms; afterwards to a gayly painted press, full of napery and linen, and opening it said, “This is thy dowry. There is nothing wanting but the shoes. I rejoice that you have preserved all yours, for I have a peculiar superstition upon that subject.”

When Amrie inquired how certain things had been hitherto conducted in the house, she nodded, and expressed her secret satisfaction only in the tone of her voice, while her content with Amrie brought joy to her very heart. As she now gave over to her much of the housekeeping, she said, “Child, I must say one thing; if any of the present arrangements do not please you, alter them according to your own judgment, for I am not one of those who think that every thing must remain as it has been, and that no improvement is possible. You have a free hand, and I shall rejoice[262] to see fresh aid to the farm; but if you will take my advice, it will be to do good by degrees.”

That was a happy state of things, when both mentally and bodily youthful strength went hand in hand with old preserved experience. At the same time Amrie, from the bottom of her heart, declared that she found every thing in the house so ordered that she should be too happy, if in her old age she could give up the house in its present established order.

“You look far before you,” said the mother, “but that is well—those who look forward look also back, and you will not forget me when I am no longer here.”

Messengers had been sent to the sons of the house, and to the sons-in-law and their families, to invite them to Zusmarshofen on the next Sunday, to consult upon family matters. Since the sending of these messengers, the old man followed Amrie continually, and seemed to have something on his mind which it was difficult for him to express. It is said that a buried treasure is guarded by a black monster, and that in the night of Christmas, a blue flame appears above the spot where the treasure is buried, which only a Sunday’s child can see; and he, only, when he can keep himself calm and pure, can raise the treasure.

One would scarcely believe that in old Farmer Landfried such a treasure was buried, guarded by[263] the two monsters, pride and contempt, and that Amrie saw the blue hovering flame, and knew how to recover the buried treasure. It is difficult to say what influence had impelled the old man to that moral exertion, to appear in her eyes good and true minded; especially that he gave himself so much trouble to please a poor, portionless girl. To Amrie it was clear that he was not willing his wife should appear as the just and loving one, and he bitter and severe, and especially as Amrie before she knew him had said, “She believed he would not give himself the trouble to appear well before others.” This had opened his heart. Whenever they were alone, he talked so much that it appeared as though his thoughts had been under lock and key, and were now for the first time opened. They were, indeed, like wonderful, old fashioned coins, old keepsakes, that would not pass now, that had been stamped upon extraordinary occasions. Some of them were of pure silver, without alloy of copper. He could not bring out his treasures as easily as the mother, when she was talking with John. His speech was stiff in the joints, but he always had something to say; he even appeared to take Amrie’s part against the mother. “Look!” he would say, “My wife is as good as the day, but the day is not a week or a year. She is but a woman. With women it is always April weather; a woman is but half a man. That I will maintain, whatever comes of it.”

“Yes, it is true,” said the old man, “though I say it to you. But, as I said, my wife is thoroughly good—almost too good—it displeases her if one does not immediately take her advice: she means so well that she thinks we do not know how good she is, if we do not imitate her. She cannot understand that the circumstances are unsuitable when we do not follow her. One thing remember; do things in your own way as you think right; that will please her. You will easily remark that she does not like to have one appear subject to her. Should any thing happen to go wrong, do not complain to your husband; nothing can be worse, than that a man should stand between his mother and her daughter-in-law. And the mother says, ‘I am nothing now; my daughter-in-law governs; even one’s own children forsake one in her old days.’ And the daughter-in-law says, ‘Now I know what you are; you let your wife be oppressed.’ I advise you if any thing of this kind happens, to tell me in secret, and I will help you. Say nothing to your husband; he has been a little spoiled by his mother. Only go on quietly, and come to me. I am your natural protector, and, indeed, related to you by a distant connection with your mother.”

He now sought to connect the different branches of his family, but he could not find the right threads, became tangled like a snarled skein[265] of yarn, and concluded with, “You may believe it upon my word, though I cannot reckon it aright.”

The time had come when he gave away, not merely false groschens from his hoards, but it gave him pleasure to part with good honest money.

One evening he called Amrie to him and said, “Look, my girl, you are brave and sensible, but you do not know what men are. My John, indeed, has a good heart, but it may yet sometimes vex him that you came to him with nothing of your own. Here, take this, but let no living soul know from whence it came; say, that by your industry you have saved it. Here, take it.” He put into her hand a stocking well filled with crown dollars, and added, “I intended he should first receive them after my death; but it is better so; he will have it now, and think it came from you. Your whole history is so strange, so contrary to all probability, that it may well be possible that you possessed a secret treasure. Do not forget that there are two and thirty crown dollars; they are each worth a groschen more than common dollars. Lock it well up in the chest where you keep your linen, and take the key always with you. On Sunday, when the relations of the family are all collected, shake them out upon the table.”

Amrie took the stocking very reluctantly and said, “I am not willing to do this; if it is necessary, I think John is the person to receive this money.”

[266]“It is necessary. John, however, may take it; but still, conceal it quickly. I hear John coming. Quick, wrap it in your apron. I believe John is jealous of me.”

They parted hastily from each other. The same evening the mother took Amrie into the store-room, and brought an apparently heavy sack out of a trunk, and said, “Pray untie that string for me.”

Amrie found it very difficult. “Wait, I will bring you the scissors; we will cut it.”

“No,” said Amrie, “I would not willingly do that. Have a little patience, I shall soon untie it.”

The mother smiled, while Amrie, with skilful fingers, at length untied the hard knot. “That is brave,” she said; “now look and see what there is within it.”

Amrie saw gold and silver coins, while the mother continued, “Look, child, you have worked a miracle with the farmer. I cannot understand how it has been done, but you have not wholly converted him; he still repeats what a pity it is that you have nothing; and he believes that in secret you possess a pretty little fortune, and that you only conceal it from us to try us, and see if we will accept you with nothing. We will not speak of this, his secret thought; thus an idea has come into my mind which I trust is not sinful in the eye of God. Look, these I have spared and saved in the six and thirty years we have lived together.[267] Part of it is also an inheritance from my mother. Now take it, and say it is your own; this will make the farmer happy—especially as he has suspected something of the kind. Why do you look so confused? Trust me, when I tell you that you can do it without the least injustice. I have examined it upon every side. Now conceal it, and say not a word to the contrary. Give me no thanks, not a single word, for it is all one, whether my child receives it now, or later, and it will give my husband a life-long joy. Now, fasten it up again.”

Early the next morning, Amrie told John all that his parents had said, and all that they had given her.

John burst into a hearty laugh. “Heaven forgive me,” he said, “of my mother I could easily believe this—but from my father! I could never have dreamed of such a thing. You are a true witch. The best of it is, that neither of them is to know what the other has done; each would deceive the other, and both are deceived, for each will believe that you really had in secret the money they each have given you. It is too good! It is enough to make one die with laughing!”

IT is not morality that governs society, but a hardened form of the same, called custom.

As society now exists, an infringement of morality is more easily pardoned than a departure from custom. Happy the time and the people, when custom and morality will be one and the same! All differences, great and small, in the mass, and in private life, have their source in the contradiction of these two—and the hardened form of custom soon stamps anew the inward flow of morality with its own impress and form.

Here, in this little history of humble men, that the great world would push aside, the same principle ruled.

The mother, who secretly felt the deepest joy at the fulfilment of her hopes, was full of anxiety on account of the opinion of the world.

“You have acted thoughtlessly,” she said to Amrie, “to come into the house as you did, so that you cannot be fetched for the wedding. This[269] is neither right nor the custom. If I could only send you away for a little time, or even John, that all might be done in order.” And to John she complained, “I think I can already hear the talk there will be at your hasty marriage—twice asked—and then all settled! This is as disreputable people do.”

She soon, however, suffered herself to be persuaded, and she smiled when John said, “Why, mother, you formerly studied morals like a parson. Why, then, should honorable people not do a thing because dishonorable persons sometimes screen themselves behind it? Can a single thing be said against my character?”

“Ah, then people must show some confidence in me, and believe that to be right, which at first sight may not appear so. I have a right to demand as much as that. Then, as to how I and my Amrie came together, was so out of the usual order, that we might also have our own way of travelling upon the high road; it certainly was no bad way. We must have courage, and not be asking after the opinion of others. The pastor of Hirlengen once said, ‘That if to-day a prophet were to arrive, he would have to submit to an examination as to whether his views were according to the old established order?’ Now, mother, if we know that a thing is right, let us carry it[270] through, without asking, right or left, the leave of anybody. Let them wonder for a time; by and by they will think as we do.”

His mother, no doubt, felt that even the most unusual event must at length be governed by the same laws that rule all other things. That the wedding might pass for a wonder, but not the wedded life, which must submit to the laws which govern all things; and she said, “With all these people, whom you now look upon so lightly, because you are conscious of your own rectitude, you will continue to live, and you will expect them to respect you and your honorable life. That they may do this, you must give them the best example; you cannot expect them to make you an exception, and you cannot run after each of them and say, ‘If you only knew how it happened, you would see that it was right.’” John answered,—

“You will soon learn that no one who has seen my Amrie, even for one hour, will have a word to say against her.” He knew also a sure way, not only to pacify his mother, but secretly to delight her, when he told her that every thing she had said to him of advice or warning, he had found brought out in Amrie. She smiled again when he mentioned the shoes, which, he declared, she should hear running about for many years to come.

On Saturday morning, before the family council[271] had assembled, came Dami; but he must immediately return to Holdenbrunn, to procure the requisite papers from the Mayor.

That first Sunday was an anxious day at the Landfried farm. The old people had accepted Amrie; but how would it be with the family? It is not easy to enter a family of such respectability, unless with a carriage and horses, household furniture, and money, and a large connection to prepare the way.

There was great driving along the roads from the Oberland on Sunday morning to Farmer Landfried’s; there came the brothers and sisters-in-law, with all their relations. It was said that John had brought home a wife without consulting parents or pastor, or that any one had had a word to say about; and they added, “It must be some beauty he had picked up behind a hedge.” The horses in the wagons suffered that day in consequence of what had taken place at Farmer Landfried’s; they received many a cut, and if they reared it was still worse, causing many hard words from the women who sat in the wagons, who scolded and wept at such reckless driving.

There was a small wagon-house in the court of the farm, within which the whole family were collected. Some of them appeared with high water-boots, others with hob-nailed shoes. Some wore three-cornered hats, with the point in front; others sat there with the broad brim shading their faces.[272] The women whispered among themselves, and winked to their husbands, saying, “We shall know how to thrust the stranger bird out of the family nest.” And there were seen bitterly angry smiles, when it was whispered here and there, that Amrie had kept the geese.

At length she appeared; but she could not give any one her hand, as she bore a flask of red wine, with glasses, and two plates filled with cake and biscuits; enough for seven hands, had every finger been a hand. She placed them all so quietly and gracefully on the table, over which the mother-in-law had spread a white cloth, that they all looked on astonished. After she had filled the glasses, without the least trembling of her hand, she said, “Our parents have given me the privilege of bidding you all, from the heart, a true welcome! Now drink!”

“We are not accustomed to drink in the morning,” said a heavy man with an immensely large nose, and spread himself out upon his chair.

“Or we drink only pure water, the wine of the geese,” said one of the women, when a not wholly concealed laugh ensued.

Amrie felt the sarcasm deeply, but took no notice of it. John’s sister was the first who took the offered glass, and looking at John, said, “God bless thee;” then she glanced at Amrie, who had held her the glass. The other women, not to fail in politeness, followed her example. The men allowed[273] themselves to be moved, and for a long time nothing was heard but the clinking of glasses.

“Your father is right,” said at length the mother to her daughters, “Amrie looks as though she were your sister, and yet she more resembles our Elizabeth, that we lost.”

“Yes, you are no losers,” said the old farmer; “had Elizabeth lived, she would have had one portion of my estate.” The mother added, “And now we have her again.”

The old man hit the sore point, though all had persuaded themselves that Amrie’s want of family was the cause of their objection to her. While she was speaking aside with John’s sister, the old man said softly to his eldest son, “She does not look like it, but only think, she has in secret a sack full of crowns; however, you must not speak of it.”

This injunction was so well obeyed, that in a few minutes every one in the room was whispering about it. John’s sister took credit to herself, that she had been good to Amrie when she believed that she had not a farthing.

Meantime, John had disappeared; he now came back bearing a sack, upon which was written, “Josenhans of Holdenbrunn.” He emptied the rich contents of the sack, clinking and rattling, upon the table, when all were astonished, the father and mother no less than the others.

[274]So Amrie had really a secret treasure! For here was much more than either had given her.

By degrees she won over all this family, and when in the evening they took leave, each said to her privately, “It was not I who objected to your want of fortune. I say now, as I always said and thought, that if you had brought nothing but what you had on, I could not have wished a better wife for John, or a better daughter-in-law for our parents.”

It was, indeed, now all right, when they believed that Amrie had brought a fortune of her own.

In Allgäu they yet relate how young Farmer Landfried brought home his wife, and how beautifully he and his wife danced together at their wedding, especially a waltz, which they called the Silver-trot. She had brought the music, they said, from Unterland.

And Dami? He became one of the most noted herdsmen in all Allgäu, and he acquired a great name, for he was sometimes called Vulture Dami, for having destroyed two broods of vultures, they having twice carried off the new fallen lambs. With him the family name of Josenhans died out. He never married, but was a good uncle to Amrie’s children—better than the uncle in America had been to him. In the winter time, when the[275] cattle are housed, he tells his sister’s children many stories of America, and of Mathew in Moosbrunnenwalde, and of the cattle in the Allgäu Mountains. Especially he had many clever stories to tell of his so-called Queen cow, who bore the deep sounding bell.

Dami said once to his sister, “Dame farmer,”—for thus he always called her,—“Dame farmer, your eldest boy is just like you; he said to me yesterday, ‘Uncle, your Queen cow is your heart’s cow.’ Yes, that is exactly like you!”

John wished to name his first daughter Barefoot; but as objection was made to recording this new name in the Baptismal Register, he had the little girl christened Barbara, and, to please himself, changed it to Barefoot.

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CHAPTER I.
THE CHILDREN KNOCK	7
CHAPTER II.
THE FAR-OFF SPIRIT	16
CHAPTER III.
THE TREE BY THE PARENTS’ HOUSE	25
CHAPTER IV.
OPEN THE DOOR	31
CHAPTER V.
UPON THE HOLDER COMMON	53
CHAPTER VI.
HER OWN COOK	74
CHAPTER VII.
THE SISTER OF CHARITY	92
CHAPTER VIII.
SACK AND AXE	112
CHAPTER IX.
AN UNBIDDEN GUEST	123
CHAPTER X.
ONLY ONE DANCE	142
CHAPTER XI.[6]
AS IT IS IN THE SONG	159
CHAPTER XII.
HE HAS COME	168
CHAPTER XIII.
OUT OF A MOTHER’S HEART	183
CHAPTER XIV.
THE HORSEMAN	196
CHAPTER XV.
BANISHED AND SAVED	205
CHAPTER XVI.
SILVER TROT	223
CHAPTER XVII.
OVER MOUNTAIN AND VALLEY	232
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE FIRST FIRE UPON THE HEARTH	248
CHAPTER XIX.
SECRET TREASURES	260
CHAPTER XX.
FAMILY WAYS	268

THE LITTLE BAREFOOT.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
THE CHILDREN KNOCK.

CHAPTER II.
THE FAR-OFF SPIRIT.

CHAPTER III.
THE TREE BY THE PARENTS’ HOUSE.

CHAPTER IV.
OPEN THE DOOR.

CHAPTER V.
UPON THE HOLDER COMMON.

CHAPTER VI.
DIE EIGENBRÄTLERIN—HER OWN COOK.

CHAPTER VII.
THE SISTER OF CHARITY.

CHAPTER VIII.
SACK AND AXE.

CHAPTER IX.
AN UNBIDDEN GUEST.

CHAPTER X.
ONLY ONE DANCE.

CHAPTER XI.
AS IT IS IN THE SONG.

CHAPTER XII.
HE HAS COME.

CHAPTER XIII.
OUT OF A MOTHER’S HEART.

CHAPTER XIV.
THE HORSEMAN.

CHAPTER XV.
BANISHED AND SAVED.

CHAPTER XVI.
SILVER TROT.

CHAPTER XVII.
OVER MOUNTAIN AND VALLEY.

CHAPTER XVIII.
THE FIRST FIRE UPON THE HEARTH.

CHAPTER XIX.
SECRET TREASURES.

CHAPTER XX.
FAMILY WAYS.

THE LITTLE BAREFOOT.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. THE CHILDREN KNOCK.

CHAPTER II. THE FAR-OFF SPIRIT.

CHAPTER III. THE TREE BY THE PARENTS’ HOUSE.

CHAPTER IV. OPEN THE DOOR.

CHAPTER V. UPON THE HOLDER COMMON.

CHAPTER VI. DIE EIGENBRÄTLERIN—HER OWN COOK.

CHAPTER VII. THE SISTER OF CHARITY.

CHAPTER VIII. SACK AND AXE.

CHAPTER IX. AN UNBIDDEN GUEST.

CHAPTER X. ONLY ONE DANCE.

CHAPTER XI. AS IT IS IN THE SONG.

CHAPTER XII. HE HAS COME.

CHAPTER XIII. OUT OF A MOTHER’S HEART.

CHAPTER XIV. THE HORSEMAN.

CHAPTER XV. BANISHED AND SAVED.

CHAPTER XVI. SILVER TROT.

CHAPTER XVII. OVER MOUNTAIN AND VALLEY.

CHAPTER XVIII. THE FIRST FIRE UPON THE HEARTH.

CHAPTER XIX. SECRET TREASURES.

CHAPTER XX. FAMILY WAYS.

CHAPTER I.
THE CHILDREN KNOCK.

CHAPTER II.
THE FAR-OFF SPIRIT.

CHAPTER III.
THE TREE BY THE PARENTS’ HOUSE.

CHAPTER IV.
OPEN THE DOOR.

CHAPTER V.
UPON THE HOLDER COMMON.

CHAPTER VI.
DIE EIGENBRÄTLERIN—HER OWN COOK.

CHAPTER VII.
THE SISTER OF CHARITY.

CHAPTER VIII.
SACK AND AXE.

CHAPTER IX.
AN UNBIDDEN GUEST.

CHAPTER X.
ONLY ONE DANCE.

CHAPTER XI.
AS IT IS IN THE SONG.

CHAPTER XII.
HE HAS COME.

CHAPTER XIII.
OUT OF A MOTHER’S HEART.

CHAPTER XIV.
THE HORSEMAN.

CHAPTER XV.
BANISHED AND SAVED.

CHAPTER XVI.
SILVER TROT.

CHAPTER XVII.
OVER MOUNTAIN AND VALLEY.

CHAPTER XVIII.
THE FIRST FIRE UPON THE HEARTH.

CHAPTER XIX.
SECRET TREASURES.

CHAPTER XX.
FAMILY WAYS.