Immensee | Page 5

said.
"Oh! no, you must not be frightened. It is lovely here. Sit down there in the shade among the long grass. Let us rest awhile: we'll find the others soon enough."
Elisabeth sat down under the overhanging branch of a beech and listened intently in every direction. Reinhard sat a few paces off on a tree stump, and gazed over at her in silence.
The sun was just above their heads, shining with the full glare of midday heat. Tiny, gold-flecked, steel-blue flies poised in the air with vibrating wings. Their ears caught a gentle humming and buzzing all round them, and far away in the wood were heard now and again the tap-tap of the woodpecker and the screech of other birds.
"Listen," said Elisabeth, "I hear a bell."
"Where?" asked Reinhard.
"Behind us. Do you hear it? It is striking twelve o'clock."
"Then the town lies behind us, and if we go straight through in this direction we are bound to fall in with the others."
So they started on their homeward way; they had given up looking for strawberries, for Elisabeth had become tired. And at last there rang out from among the trees the laughing voices of the picnic party; then they saw too a white cloth spread gleaming on the ground; it was the luncheon-table and on it were strawberries enough and to spare.
The old gentleman had a table-napkin tucked in his button-hole and was continuing his moral sermon to the young folks and vigorously carving a joint of roast meat.
"Here come the stragglers," cried the young people when they saw Reinhard and Elisabeth advancing among the trees.
"This way," shouted the old gentleman. "Empty your handkerchiefs, upside down, with your hats! Now show us what you have found."
"Only hunger and thirst," said Reinhard.
"If that's all," replied the old man, lifting up and showing them the bowl full of fruit, "you must keep what you've got. You remember the agreement: nothing here for lazybones to eat."
But in the end he was prevailed on to relent; the banquet proceeded, and a thrush in a juniper bush provided the music.
So the day passed. But Reinhard had, after all, found something, and though it was not strawberries yet it was something that had grown in the wood. When he got home this is what he wrote in his old parchment- bound volume:
Out on the hill-side yonder The wind to rest is laid; Under the drooping branches There sits the little maid.
She sits among the wild thyme, She sits in the fragrant air; The blue flies hum around her, Bright wings flash everywhere.
And through the silent woodland She peers with watchful eyen, While on her hazel ringlets Sparkles the glad sunshine.
And far, far off the cuckoo Laughs out his song. I ween Hers are the bright, the golden Eyes of the woodland queen.
So she was not only his little sweetheart, but was also the expression of all that was lovely and wonderful in his opening life.
* * * * *

BY THE ROADSIDE THE CHILD STOOD

The time is Christmas Eve. Before the close of the afternoon Reinhard and some other students were sitting together at an old oak table in the Ratskeller. [Footnote: The basement of the Rathaus or Town Hall. This, in almost every German town of importance, has become a restaurant and place of refreshment.] The lamps on the wall were lighted, for down here in the basement it was already growing dark; but there was only a thin sprinkling of customers present, and the waiters were leaning idly up against the pillars let into the walls.
In a corner of the vaulted room sat a fiddler and a fine-featured gipsy-girl with a zither; their instruments lay in their laps, and they seemed to be looking about them with an air of indifference.
A champagne cork popped off at the table occupied by the students. "Drink, my gipsy darling!" cried a young man of aristocratic appearance, holding out to the girl a glass full of wine.
"I don't care about it," she said, without altering her position.
"Well, then, give us a song," cried the young nobleman, and threw a silver coin into her lap. The girl slowly ran her fingers through her black hair while the fiddler whispered in her ear. But she threw back her head, and rested her chin on her zither.
"For him," she said, "I'm not going to play."
Reinhard leapt up with his glass in his hand and stood in front of her.
"What do you want?" she asked defiantly.
"To have a look at your eyes."
"What have my eyes to do with you?"
Reinhard's glance flashed down on her. "I know they are false."
She laid her cheek in the palm of her hand and gave him a searching look. Reinhard raised his glass to his mouth.
"Here's to your beautiful, wicked eyes!" he said, and drank.
She laughed and tossed