"I knew it! I felt it must come!" cried Walpurga when Franz brought the news of Irma's illness. "I knew she'd never come back!" she repeated again and again, weeping, wringing her hands, and praying by turns.

"That won't help any," said Hansei, laying his hand on her shoulder. "Get up; you're not like this at other times. Come, may be it isn't so bad after all; and even if it should be, this is no time to cry and weep; we must do all that can be done."

"What can I do? What shall I do?" said Walpurga, turning her tearful face to Hansei.

He helped her up and said:

"Franz says there's a doctor up there, who has a medicine chest with him. And now let's eat something and then go up to her."

"Oh dear Lord, I can't walk three steps; I feel as if my limbs were broken."

"Then you'd better stay here and I'll go up."

"Would you leave me here alone? What am I to do, then?"

"I don't know what. Go to bed; perhaps you can sleep."

"I don't want to go to bed; I don't want to sleep; I don't want anything. I'll go along, too, and, if I die on the way, I can't help it."

"Don't talk so! you wrong me and the children when you do," Hansei was about to say, but he made a rapid movement, as if to repress the words. "There's no need of saying that," thought he; "when women, filled with pity for themselves, begin to complain of their lot, they don't know what they say."

Hansei brought his wife her best clothes, for she was so agitated that she scarcely knew where they were, or how to put them on. Hansei proved quite a clever valet.

"Now you must put your shoes on yourself," said he, at last.

Walpurga could not help smiling through her tears. It was not until then that she perceived how kindly and faithfully he had helped her, and, with a bright voice, she said: "Yes, so I can; you've helped me, and now I feel that I can walk."

Hansei had the meal brought in and, after placing his mountain staff, his hunting-bag and his hat in readiness, he sat down to eat. Walpurga was also obliged to sit down, although she ate but little. One of Hansei's great virtues was that he could eat heartily at any time. He did full justice to the meal, and his manner seemed to say that when one has satisfied his hunger, he is better prepared for any undertaking.

Before leaving, he cut off a large piece of bread and put it in his pocket.

The children were consigned to the care of the upper servant, and one of the laboring women was also charged to remain in the house. Hansei and his wife started for the meadow.

They had already gone some distance, when Burgei came running after them, crying: "I want to go along; I want to go to Cousin Irmgard."

There was no help for it. They were obliged to take the child with them, for they were afraid to let her go back alone and neither of them cared to take her back.

"You're a naughty child, a very naughty child! And now I've got to carry you, a big girl like you," said Walpurga, taking the child in her arms. Hansei nodded, with a pleased air. It was well the child was with them, for then his wife, who was apt to go off into extremes, would not become so violent if the worst should happen.

Walpurga, who had at first thought that she could not walk alone, now carried the child and stepped out bravely.

"Let Burgei walk for a while, and when she gets tired again. I'll carry her," said Hansei.

As long as the path was wide enough, the child walked between its parents, and when it grew narrower, they let her run on ahead. When they found that they could get on but slowly, on account of the child, Hansei took her up in his arms, where she soon fell asleep.

Walpurga then softly whispered to Hansei:

"I must tell you now who our Irmgard is."

"And I tell you I don't want to know. She must tell me herself, if she lives; and if she's dead, you can tell me then, just as well."

"Dead!" cried Walpurga, "Do you know more than I do? Did Franz tell you anything in secret?"

"Franz told me nothing but what you've heard."

"But why do you talk about death in that way?"

"Because one who's very sick can easily die. But do be calm."

"Yes, yes; I hardly know that we are in the woods, and I feel as if I couldn't see a thing. Stop a moment! There's a doctor up there. He knows her, and others who know her will come, too. The man who came to see us the other day is her brother, and now they'll go and take our Irmgard away with them."

"If she's in her right mind, and wants to go of her own free will, we can't say anything against it," said Hansei, "but this I do say, and no one will move me from it. As long as she's so sick that she can't say what she wants, I won't let them do a thing to her. I'm Hansei, and I'm her protector; nothing shall happen to her--All I ask of you, is to stand by me and not interfere. You know when I say a thing, I mean it."

"Yes, yes, you're right!" said Walpurga. Hansei's resolute words seemed to infuse her with new strength, for she went up the steep mountain path without the slightest difficulty. It almost seemed as if Hansei had been carrying her as well as the child. Moved by this thought, she suddenly said:

"Do you remember when you once wanted to carry me, at home by the lake? Oh, dear me, it seems as if we must have been very different beings then, for we knew nothing at all of the world."

"We're none the worse off, for knowing and having some of it!" replied Hansei, in a loud voice, and awakening the child. "There, now; run along again," said he to Burgei.

They rested for a little while. Hansei remembered the piece of bread that he had put in his pocket and, cutting off a bit of it, he said while pointing toward the valley with his knife: "Our brook runs down through there, and it's only an hour's distance from here to the little town where Stasi lives."

"Only an hour from here?" exclaimed Walpurga.

"Then I'll walk over there. She's the best, the only help. You go on with the child, straight up to the hut. I'll soon follow you by way of the town, and I'll bring something good with me."

"Wife! Have you gone mad? Don't make me crazy, too. Do you want to run off, when you're so near the dying one?"

"Then I must tell you. The queen is down there and she alone can help her. God be with you, Hansei, and with you too, Burgei. I'll soon follow after you."

Away she ran, through the forest, along the stream, and toward the town.

"Where's mother? Mother! mother!" cried the child.

"Be quiet!" said Hansei. "Mother has another child down there, and he's a prince and will send you golden clothes."

"Is it an enchanted prince that mother is going to free from a spell?" asked the child.

"Yes, he's enchanted," said Hansei, endeavoring to quiet her.

"But what was he changed into?" asked the child.

"Into a cuckoo; but not another word now; be quiet."

Filled with strange thoughts, the father and child went up the mountain. Hansei could not understand how, at such a moment, his wife could leave her friend and go to the queen--. Perhaps they were bound together in some way? He shook his head. Matters that he could not disentangle, he always put away from him. The only thing was to see what could be done for the sick one; that was the most important matter. He squared his shoulders and was ready, if the physician thought well of it, to carry Irmgard in his arms, all the way down to the farm.

The child ran along, looking about it with wondering eyes. "He's calling! he's calling!" whispered she. "My mother will free you."

A cuckoo was really crying in the wood, through which the noonday sun was gleaming. His cry was sometimes near and then more distant, and at last, uttering his peculiar note, he flew over the travelers' heads.

Hansei, with the child, at last reached the shepherd's hut, where the uncle and Gundel, with sorrowful countenances, came forward to meet him.

"She's still alive, but she can't last long," said the uncle, wiping away his tears with his sleeve. "The doctor won't let any of us go in to her. But where's Walpurga?"

"She'll soon be here," replied Hansei. It was all he could do to keep off the cows, who knew their master and came up to him, as was their wont, in order to get a handful of salt. But he had forgotten to bring it with him, and all the salt they had up here was in the room that no one was permitted to enter.

Hansei ordered the cowboy to drive the cows off for some distance, so that the sick one might not hear the sound of the bells. That was all he could do for Irma.

He sat down sadly on the bench before the hut, and taking up a piece of carved wood which lay on the ground, he looked at it as carefully as if it were marble and turned it again and again. He sat there for a long time. Then he put Burgei in Gundel's charge, and, hoping to meet his wife, went out alone along the road that led toward the little town. But it was long before she came. He went further into the forest, and was vexed, as he always was whenever he came up here, to think of yonder fine trees that were his own property, but which could not be felled, because no one could get up to the rocks on which they were. A chattering magpie, sitting on the high branches of a beautiful pine, seemed to be making sport of him. After he had again and again passed his hand over his face, Hansei became conscious of the thoughts that had engaged him in the midst of all this trouble. There was nothing wrong in it--he was sure of that; but this was not the time to think of such things, and, as if the trouble were now dawning on him for the first time, he was overwhelmed with grief.

He turned back and went toward the hut. The doctor was just coming out.

"You are the freehold farmer, I suppose?"

"Yes; and you're the doctor?"

"Yes."

"How is she?"

"I don't think she will die before evening."

Hansei's eyes filled with tears.

The uncle asked Gunther to allow him to fetch out the little kid. He granted his request. Stepping softly, he brought it out, gave it something to drink and, carrying it back again, placed it at the sick girl's feet.

"She opened her eyes and nodded to me, but she didn't say a word; and then she closed her eyes again," said the uncle.

Hansei begged that he might be permitted to see Irmgard once more. He was allowed to look through the crevice in the shutter. When Gunther again returned to the sick-room, Hansei, weeping as if his heart would break, walked out along the road that led toward the town.

"Uncle's right: she's become like an angel," said he to himself.

The calf that was born on the first day that they had come up to the shepherd's hut seemed conscious of its special claims on Hansei. In spite of all he could do it kept running after him for salt. Hansei succeeded in satisfying it, by giving it the last morsel of bread that he had about him.

When he reached the woods, he was obliged to sit down; and there he wept and would, now and then, look about him as if bewildered. How could it be possible that the sun was still shining, the cuckoo crying, and the hawk screaming, while she who was up there was breathing her last--

What could Walpurga want of the queen? "Her place is up there," thought he to himself, again and again.