MARGRET’S PILGRIMAGE BY CLARA VIEBIG Translated by Grace Isabel Colbron. Copyright, 1907, by P. F. Collier & Son. It was already autumn on the heights of the Eifel. The cold winds blew in from the north, snorting in malicious haste. They colored the thin grass yellow, and tousled the gnarled firs and the trembling birches. Down in the sunny Moselle Valley the roses still bloomed in the gardens, in their glory of white, red, and yellow petals. Heavily laden fruit trees nodded over the crystal clear stream, the rich blood swelled the grape, and walnut and chestnut trees burst open the green coverings of their fruit and shook the shining brown heart of it down upon the earth. But up on the heights the nights smelt of winter already. The sloes hung blue and tart on the blackthorn, cold frost silvered the grass and the moss, and heavy mists filled the ravines. It was inhospitably cold and unfriendly. The Eifel with its treeless heights, its purple moors, and its dark tarns made itself ready to receive its stern master, the Winter. Where the wood halts and only brush can grow, a tiny hut clung to the rocks. It was a miserably poor little nest with a low hanging roof of moss, on top of which house-leek and other growing plants caught foothold, even one saucy little pine tree had settled down there. The door was low, the window covered with paper, but a contented white goat munched the grass in front of the door, and a few weather-beaten sunflowers nodded their heavy heads in fat condescension. In this lonely hut, the poorest for many a mile, lived the honest widow Anna Maria Balduin. She had lived there many years, ever since the time, eighteen years back, when she had entered it as the happy bride of Peter Balduin, the sturdy woodchopper. Five years later they had carried him out and buried him in the little hill churchyard down in Kyllburg. That had been a bad year. The potato crop was a failure, bread rose in price, the famine fever ravished the Eifel, the snow fell early, and hungry wolves crept down to the outlying huts. In the widow’s little home the care for daily bread, grief for the lost one, cold, and deprivation were daily guests. The pale woman sat at her spinning wheel and let the tears flow free, while her little daughter Margret knelt beside her, laughing and playing with pebbles, unheeding her mother’s sorrow.