Thereupon he gave the necessary orders, and rode on with the other officers. Heinrich now approached a little nearer with his waggon, jumped down, and asked: "How has it gone, Fieka?--But I need not ask you that. You look as if your heart were on your tongue; he has set your father free, has he not?" And he put his arm round her: "Come, Fieka, get up into the waggon, here's a lot of Frenchmen coming,--we must get out of their way." "They won't hurt us," said Fieka, mounting higher up the bank and looking along the road. "He hasn't set him free, but he's promised that he will. I am to stay near father, and all the prisoners are to come in our waggon; and, Heinrich; you can go home now to the mill and help mother." Heinrich made the reins fast to a willow-tree, and bent down to buckle some strap in the harness, and then patted and stroked the smooth glossy neck of the near side-horse.-- "You are right, Heinrich," said Fieka, "you do not like to leave your horses and waggon behind you; but old Inspector Bräsig will take them back for you,--he will willingly do us that favour." "Fieka, I was not thinking about the horses and waggon," said Heinrich, "I was thinking about you and what the old Herr Amtshauptmann said to me." "What was that?" she asked. "If I let a hair of your head be touched, I was never to dare appear before his eyes again. And, Fieka, I promised him I would stay by you at all times, and when I made him that promise," and he went up to her and took her hand in his, and looked earnestly into her eyes--"there were two present listening, though no one knew it, but I alone; Fieka, they were--God, and my own heart." Fieka blushed red as a rose, but when he put his arm round her, she gently freed herself from his embrace and said-- "Not here, Heinrich!--Not to-day, Heinrich!--Good heavens, why there is my old father!" So saying, she left him, and went to meet her father; and Heinrich stood there like a tree in the winter-time when the green leaves have all fallen off, and the birds no longer sing of love and joy in its branches. But when she turned round; came back to him again, cried: "Heinrich, Heinrich," and the tears welled up into her eyes; and then hastily set off again towards her father, leaf after leaf burst forth, and songs of joy and love sounded in the air, and spring arose in his heart, the Spring of Love,--the only Spring which can, through a whole lifetime, survive summer's heat, and autumn's storms and winter's cold;--can survive, if the Spring be real; the life true.