The rose twined its thorny arms thickly over the entrance and took a solemn oath to guard it faithfully. The butterflies were witnesses. Next morning Johannes awoke in his own little bed, with Presto, and the clock against the wall. The cord with the key was gone from round his neck. IV 'Children! children! A summer like this is a terrible infliction!' sighed one of three large stoves which stood side by side to bewail their fate in a garret of the old house. 'For weeks I have not seen one living soul or heard one rational remark. And always that hollow within! It is fearful!' 'I am full of spiders' webs,' said the second. 'And that would never happen in the winter.' 'And I am so dry and dusty that I shall be quite ashamed when, as winter comes on, the Black Man appears again, as the poet says.' This piece of learning the third stove had of course picked up from Johannes, who had repeated some verses last winter, standing before the hearth. 'You must not speak so disrespectfully of the smith,' said the first stove, who was the eldest. 'It annoys me.' A few shovels and tongs which lay on the floor, wrapped in paper to preserve them from rust, also expressed their opinion of this frivolous mode of speech. But suddenly they were all silent, for the shutter in the roof was raised; a beam of light shone in on the gloomy place, and the whole party lapsed into silence under their dust and confusion. It was Johannes who had come to disturb their conversation. This loft was at all times a delightful spot to him, and now, after the strange adventures of the last few days, he often came here. Here he found peace and solitude. There was a window, too, closed by a shutter, which looked out towards the sand-hills. It was a great delight to open the shutter suddenly, and, after the mysterious twilight of? the garret, to see all at once the sunlit landscape shut in by the fair, rolling _dimes_. It was three weeks since that Friday evening, and Johannes had seen nothing of his friend since. The key was gone, and there was nothing now to assure him that he had not dreamed it all. Often, indeed, he could not conquer a fear that it was all nothing but fancy. He grew very silent, and his father was alarmed, for he observed that since that night out of doors Johannes had certainly had something the matter with him. But Johannes was only pining for Windekind. 'Can he be less fond of me than I of him?' he murmured, as he stood at the garret window and looked out over the green and flowery garden. 'Why is it that he never comes near me now? If I could--but perhaps he has other friends, and perhaps he loves them more than me. I have no other friend, not one. I love no one but him! I love him so much--oh so much!'