When therefore Sali and Vreni finally awoke from their dreams and threw a glance around, they saw nothing but staring faces. Nobody greeted them; and they themselves knew not whether to salute anyone of these former acquaintances, whose show of unfriendliness was, just the same, not so much design as astonishment. Vreni became afraid and blushed from sheer embarrassment, but Sali took her hand and led her away. And the poor girl followed him willingly, bearing in her hand the huge gingerbread cottage, although the trumpets and horns from inside the inn sounded so invitingly, and although she was most anxious and eager to dance. "We cannot dance here," said Sali, when they had been going some little distance aside, "for there would not be any amusement in it under the circumstances." "You are right," Vreni said sadly, "and I really think now we had better drop the whole idea and I will try and find a place for me to stay overnight." "No," Sali cried, "you must have a chance to dance for once. For that, too, I brought you the shoes. Let us go where the poor folks are having a good time, since we, too, belong to them. They will not look down on us. At every kermess here there is also dancing at the Paradise Garden, since it belongs to this parish, and we are going there, and you can, if it comes to the worst, also find a bed to sleep there." Vreni shuddered at the thought of having to sleep for the first time of her young life in a place where nobody knew her. But she followed without a murmur where Sali led her. Was he not everything in the world to her now? The so-called Paradise Garden was a house of entertainment situated in a beautiful spot, lying all by itself at the side of a mountain from which one had a view far over the whole country. But on holidays like this only the poorer classes, the children of small farmers and of day laborers, even vagrants, used to resort to it. A hundred years before a wealthy man of queer habits had built it as a summer villa for himself, and nobody had succeeded him as tenant, and since the house could not be used for anything else, the whole place after a while began to decay, and so finally it got into the hands of an innkeeper who managed it in his own peculiar way.