Wait for me, my little sweetheart: I will find the way to you, As a grown man I will seek you, Seek and find you ever true." So singing they walked arm in arm through the long winding valley, till the dawn approached like a golden bird opening its great wings to fly. Kaethchen reached her cottage door. All was silent within. "Good-bye," she said, and their eyes met in one last farewell. "Auf Wiedersehen!" said Green Ears (that pretty German farewell greeting which means so much more than good-bye), and then he stole back down the stony street, kissing his hands again and again to the little girl. In some strange way Kaethchen passed _through_ the door of her little cottage; she had become for the time incorporeal; through the touch of a fairy her body and soul had become _loose_, that is to say, and she was able to enter the house as silently as a person in a dream. She went through the kitchen and up the steep wooden stairs. It seemed to her as if her feet did not touch the ground, she floated rather than walked. She reached her own little attic, and saw the room as if it were a picture, the square window-frame, the branches of the trees outside, the old pictures on the walls that she was so fond of. But what was her surprise to see _herself_ curled up asleep in her big wooden bed! The horror of it made her faint, and she remembered no more until she found herself in her own bed under her own big feather sack. In order that she should not forget her night's adventures, or think it was all merely a dream, she found a ring of yellow grass wound tightly round her third finger. From that hour, though the ring fell to pieces, the mark of it was clearly to be seen on her finger. It _was_ a fairy ring, you see. Her mother apparently had not missed her, and the baby was as jolly as ever. "What _was_ the matter with you last night, Kaethe?" said her mother. "You were dreamier than ever; not a word could we get out of you. You _must_ have been tired out, you poor child!" "But everything was all right, wasn't it, mother, the potatoes were boiled and the supper ready?" "Why of course you managed very nicely. Now hurry up and let us have breakfast." Now I feel sure that all the children who read this story will want to know what happened to Kaethchen and Green Ears later on. Did he really come back to visit her as a grown man? Did they marry and live happy ever after? Had he green ears as a mortal? But alas the fairies who told me this story, have left these questions unanswered, at all events for the present, so I can only guess at the conclusion. I think myself that Green Ears was pretty sure to succeed in his quest, because if you want a thing intensely enough, you can usually get it. They would make a rather funny married couple, that is true, and we will hope that Green Ears did not turn head over heels on his marriage day.