And she went among the beds, and searched and searched, but there was not one to be found. Then she sat down and wept; her tears fell just upon a spot where a rosebush lay buried, and when the warm tears moistened the earth, the tree at once sprouted up as blooming as when it had sunk; and Gerda embraced it, kissed the roses, and thought of the beautiful roses at home, and also of little Kay. "Oh, how I have been detained!" said the little girl. "I wanted to seek for little Kay! Do you not know where he is?" she asked the roses. "Do you think he is dead?" "He is not dead," the roses answered. "We have been in the ground. All the dead people are there, but Kay is not there." "Thank you," said little Gerda, and she went to the other flowers, looked into their cups, and asked, "Do you know where little Kay is?" But every flower stood in the sun thinking only of her own story, or fancy tale. Gerda heard many, many, of them; but not one knew anything of Kay. And what did the Tiger Lily say? "Do you hear the drum, 'Rub-dub'? There are only two notes, always 'rub- dub'! Hear the mourning song of the women; hear the call of the priests. The Hindoo widow stands in her long red mantle on the funeral pile; the flames rise up around her and her dead husband; but the Hindoo woman is thinking of the living one here in the circle, of him whose eyes burn hotter than flames, whose fiery glances have burned into her soul more ardently than the flames themselves, which are soon to burn her body to ashes. Can the flame of the heart die in the flame of the funeral pile?" "I don't understand that at all!" said little Gerda. "That's my story," said the Lily. What says the Convolvulus? "Over the narrow road looms an old knightly castle; thickly the ivy grows over the crumbling red walls, leaf by leaf up to the balcony, where stands a beautiful girl; she bends over the balustrade and glances up the road. No rose on its branch is fresher than she; no apple blossom wafted onward by the wind floats more lightly along. How her costly silks rustle! 'Comes he not yet?'" "Is it Kay whom you mean?" asked little Gerda. "I'm only speaking of a story--my dream," replied the Convolvulus. What said the little Snowdrop?