From that time he was always melancholy and in tears. The whole village mourned for the young farmer. Elizabeth was inconsolable; the children lamented aloud. Half a year after the old father died; Elizabeth's parents soon followed him, and she was obliged to take the sole management of the large estate. Her many avocations removed her somewhat from her sorrow; the education of her children, the superintendence of her property, left her no time for care and grief. So after two years she resolved on a new marriage, and gave her hand to a young sprightly man, who had loved her from his youth. But soon all things in the house assumed another form. The cattle died; men and maid-servants were unfaithful; the barns filled with grain were consumed by fire; people in the town who owed them various sums fled away with the money. The landlord soon found himself compelled to sell some fields and meadows; but a failure in the crops, and a year of scarcity, only brought him into new embarrassments. It seemed nought else than as if the gold, so wondrously obtained, were in all ways seeking a speedy flight. Meanwhile the family increased; and Elizabeth, as well as her husband, became careless and dilatory from despair. He endeavoured to drown his cares by drinking much of intoxicating wine, which made him irritable and passionate, so that Elizabeth often bewailed her misery with bitter tears. As soon as their fortune declined, their friends in the village kept aloof; so that in a few years, they found themselves quite forsaken, and with the greatest difficulty could struggle on from week to week. They had only a few sheep and one cow remaining; which Elizabeth herself often tended with her children. She was once sitting thus with her work on the grass, Leonora by her side, and a child at her breast, when they saw from the distance a strange form coming towards them. It was a man in a coat all in tatters, barefoot, his countenance sunburnt to a dark-brown, and still more disfigured by a long rough beard; he wore no covering on his head, but had a garland of green leaves twisted through his hair, which made his wild appearance still more strange and incomprehensible. On his back he carried in a fast-bound sack a heavy burden; in walking he supported himself on a young fir-tree.