Immensee | Page 5

the air
was filled with a strong smell of heather, patches of which alternated
with the short grass over these open spaces.
"How lonely it is here!" said Elisabeth "I wonder where the others are?"
Reinhard had never thought of getting back.
"Wait a bit," he said, holding his hand aloft; "where is the wind coming
from?" But wind there was none.
"Listen!" said Elisabeth, "I think I heard them talking. Just give a call
in that direction."
Reinhard hollowed his hand and shouted: "Come here!"
"Here!" was echoed back.
"They answered," cried Elisabeth clapping her hands.
"No, that was nothing; it was only the echo."
Elisabeth seized Reinhard's hand. "I'm frightened!" she 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,"