On reaching Heidi's room the doctor put the candle down on the table, and taking Heidi up in his arms laid her on the bed and carefully covered her over. Then he sat down beside her and waited until she had grown quieter and no longer trembled so violently. He then took her hand and said in a kind, soothing voice, "There, now you feel better, and now tell me where you were wanting to go to?" "I did not want to go anywhere," said Heidi. "I did not know I went downstairs, but all at once I was there." "I see, and had you been dreaming, so that you seemed to see and hear something very distinctly?" [Illustration: THE DOCTOR DISCOVERS HEIDI'S HOME-SICKNESS] "Yes, I dream every night, and always about the same things. I think I am back with grandfather, and I hear the sound in the fir trees outside, and I see the stars shining so brightly, and then I open the door quickly and run out, and it is all so beautiful! But when I wake I am still in Frankfurt." And Heidi struggled as she spoke to keep back the sobs which seemed to choke her. "And have you no pain anywhere? no pain in your head or back?" "No, only a feeling as if there were a great stone weighing on me here." "As if you had eaten something that would not go down." "No, not like that; something heavy as if I wanted to cry very much." "I see, and then do you have a good cry?" "Oh, no, I mustn't; Miss Rottermeyer forbade me to cry." "So you swallow it all down, I suppose? Are you happy here in Frankfurt?" "Yes," was the low answer; but it sounded more like "No." "And where did you live with your grandfather?" "Up on the mountain." "That wasn't very amusing; rather dull at times, eh?" "No, no, it was beautiful, beautiful!" Heidi could go no further; the remembrance of the past, the excitement she had just gone through, the long suppressed weeping, were too much for the child's strength; the tears began to fall fast, and she broke into violent weeping. The doctor patted her head kindly. "There, there, go on crying, it will do you good, and then go to sleep: it will be all right tomorrow." Then he left the room and went downstairs to Mr. Sesemann; when he was once more sitting in the arm-chair opposite his friend, "Sesemann," he said, "let me first tell you that your little charge is a sleep-walker; she is the ghost who has nightly opened the front door and put your household into this fever of alarm. Secondly, the child is consumed with home-sickness to such an extent that she is nearly a skeleton already, and soon will be quite one; something must be done at once. There is but one remedy and that is to send her back to her native mountain air. So tomorrow the child must start for home; there you have my prescription." Mr. Sesemann had risen and now paced up and down the room in the greatest state of concern.