This was the saddest existence that Pet had experienced yet, and she felt very anxious for the month to pass away. After the happiness she had enjoyed in Silver-country, the excessive hardship and loneliness of the old woman's life seemed very hard to bear. All day long she wandered about the woods, picking up sticks and tying them in little bundles, and, perhaps, in the end she would only receive a penny for the work of her day. Some days she could not leave her hut, and would lie there alone without anything to eat. "Oh, my son, my dear son!" she would cry, "where are you now, and will you ever come back to me?" Pet watched her clock very eagerly, longing for the month to come to an end; but the clock still kept going and going, as if it never meant to stop. For a good while Pet thought that it was only because of her unhappiness and impatience that the time seemed so long, but at last she discovered to her horror that her key was lost! All her searches for it proved vain. It was quite evident that the key must have dropped through a hole in the old woman's tattered pocket, and fallen somewhere among the heaps of dried leaves, or into the wilderness of the brushwood of the forest. "Tick, tick! tick, tick!" went that unmerciful clock from its perch on the wall, all through the long days and nights, and poor Pet was in despair at the thought of living locked up in the old woman all her life. Now, indeed, she could groan most heartily when the old woman groaned, and shed bitter tears which rolled plentifully down the old woman's wrinkled cheeks and over her nose. "Oh, Time, Time, my friend!" she thought, "will you not come to my assistance?" But though Time fully intended to stand her friend all through her troubles, still he did not choose to help her at that particular moment. And so days, weeks and months went past; and then the years began to go over, and Pet was still locked up in the miserable old woman. Seven years had passed away and Pet had become in some degree reconciled to her sorrowful existence. She wandered about the forest picking up her sticks, and trying to cheer herself up a little by gathering bouquets of the pretty forest flowers. People passing by often saw the sad figure, all in gray hair and tatters, sitting on a trunk of a fallen tree, wailing and moaning, and, of course, they thought it was altogether the poor old woman lamenting for her son. They never thought of its being also Pet, bewailing her dreary imprisonment. One fine spring morning she went out as usual to pick her sticks, and looking up from her work, she saw suddenly a beautiful, noble-looking young figure on horseback spring up in a distant glade of violets, and come riding towards her as if out of a dream. As the youth came near she recognized his bright blue eyes and his silver mantle, and she said to herself: