Next day she no longer thought of leaving the island, and the third day they began without noticing it to say “our island.” Every morning they landed at the rock, and then she went up to the clearing with her goats or followed him to examine nooses and traps. At last she began also to teach him her art of feeding himself for many days on berries and ferns and nothing, and she noticed that he soon won even greater aptitude in this than she had herself. He grew thin and dry as a blown-off branch, and yet his sinews knotted themselves all the harder. But he always remained quiet and taciturn; and when she asked him what weighed on his mind, he went off on his own paths and remained long away. They no longer knew the names of the days, but on the Sabbath the wind carried the distant sound of the bells far into the wilderness, and then Johannes put on his embroidered leather coat and led her upon the overgrown sepulchre-mound, from which they could see over fen and lake. With her hand in his he spoke then of God’s love, which covered the wretchedest crevices with its fairest bounties, and often they knelt in the grass for long periods and prayed that He would likewise sow a few grains of His seed in their souls. After much conversation, however, Johannes was always doubly heavy in mind and sought for solitude. The nights became ever darker, and often when she turned back from her herd she had to light her way with a torch between mountain walls and the roots of overblown trees. The giant firs, heaven high, were like tents, where black hands sprawled out from among the ragged leafage to seize her by the braids; but she felt no fear, she thought only of one thing. Wherever she went and whatever she busied herself with, she only thought that the summer would soon be ended and that no one could know what would then become of Johannes and her. Then one October morning she was awakened by Johannes. “Do you remember the cranes you spoke of?” he asked. “Now I can both stand so quiet that I look like a dry juniper bush, and bend down so that I look like a stone, and lie down flat on the ground so that no one can tell me from a pile of rotten twigs. I have taught myself more than that. I can feed myself on berries and roots, and if those are wanting I can starve along on nothing.” She sat up and listened to a far-off noise. “That is no cranes.” “Then I’ll investigate what it is.” He washed himself in the lake, put on his leather coat as on a Sunday, and pushed her gently aside when she wanted to hold him back. “Don’t go, Johannes!” she begged. “I won’t let you go from me without following.” In silence they came ashore with the island at the ledge and went down through the woods toward the settled land to a bare clearing, from which there was a free outlook over the mossy heath and meadows as far as Kerstin Bure’s mill and the church.