Annie Brunel looked forward through the ruddy mist that the sunset was pouring over the picture before them, and thought that it was very beautiful indeed. She paid little attention to the gaunt white house. But this little village, set in a clearing of the great forest—its brown wooden houses, with their heavy projecting eaves and numerous windows; the small white church, with a large sundial painted in black on the gable; the long, sloping hill behind, covered, away even, to the horizon, with the black-green pines of the Schwarzwald—all these things, steeped in the crimson glow of the western light, were indeed most charming and picturesque. "Why do they project the roofs so much?" she said, looking especially at the inn of the little hamlet they were approaching. "I thought these splendid old houses only existed in Swiss lithographs." "For the snow," said the Count, grandly, as if the intensity of the Black Forest winters belonged to him. "You should see a regular snowstorm in this country, with half the houses buried, the mail-coaches turned into sledges—why, every man who keeps a carriage here must keep it in duplicate—a wheel-carriage for the summer, a sledge for the winter." With which they drove through the village. Hans Halm, the sturdy innkeeper, was at the door of that palace in brown wood which he called his house; and to Hermann’s hurried—"Wie geht’s? Wie geht’s, Halm?" he returned a joyous "Danke schön, Hermann." "But where is Grete?" said Hermann, in a bewildered way, to the English Mary who sate beside him in the second carriage. "She not here? She know I come; she is not at the door of the inn——" "Who is Grete?" said Mary, who had made great friends with the big keeper in England. "Why, Grete is—you know, Grete." At that moment Margarethe Halm was in the courtyard of the Count’s house, whither she had stolen away from her father’s house, with her heart beating, and her ears listening for the sound of the carriage-wheels. A young, swarthy, handsome girl, with an innocent, dumb, animal-like fondness and honesty in her big, soft, black eyes, she stood there in her very best clothes—her Sunday head-dress of black velvet and gold beads; her short petticoats and dress; her elaborately embroidered boddice; her puffed white sleeves, coming down to the elbow, and there exposing her round, fat, sunburnt arms. She it was with whom Hermann had sung, on the night before he left for England, the old ballad in which the wanderer bids farewell to his native vale; and ever since, when she heard the pitiful words— "Muss aus dem Thal jetzt scheiden, Wo alles Lust und Klang; Das ist mein herbstes Leiden Mein letzter Gang. Dich, mein stilles Thal, grüss ich tausend Mal! Das ist mein herbstes Leiden, Mein letzter Gang!"