"I went up to her, and asked her to help me. She bade me sit down at her side, and gave me some bread and a little wine. While I was eating she chanted a sort of hymn in a harsh, rough voice; and as soon as I had done, she rose and told me to follow her. Strange and odd as the old woman's voice and appearance was, I was delighted at this invitation; she limped away before me, helping herself along with her stick; and I followed, at first hardly able to keep from laughing at the strange faces she made at every step. We soon left the mountains behind us; we walked on over soft grassy meadows, and then along a forest glade; as we came out again into the open country the sun was just setting, and the splendour of that evening, and the feeling it produced in me, I never shall forget. The sky was steeped in gold and crimson; the trees stood with their tops flushed in the evening glow; a gleam of enchanting beauty lay upon the fields; every leaf was hushed and still; and the pure heaven looked down as if the sky-curtain was withdrawn, and Paradise lay open to our eyes; the brook bubbled along the valley; and from time to time, as a soft air swept over the forest, the rustling leaves appeared to gasp for joy. Visions of the world, and all its strange and wondrous incidents, rose up before my chilled soul. I forgot myself and my conductress, and eyes and heart were lost in ecstacy in gazing on those golden clouds. "We went up a gentle hill which was planted with chestnut-trees; from the top of which we saw down into a green valley, in the middle of which, surrounded by a clump of chestnuts, lay a little cottage. Presently a burst of merry barking greeted us, and a bright beautiful little dog came bounding and jumping up against the old woman, and frisking round us with every sign of the greatest satisfaction. Then he turned to me, and, after looking me all over, seemed tolerably satisfied, and ran back again to his mistress. As we descended the hill, I heard a strange kind of song, which seemed to come from the cottage, and to be sung by a bird: 'In my forest-bower I sing all day, Hour after hour, To eternity. Oh, happy am I In my forest-bower!' These few words were repeated over and over again: the nearest description I can give of the sound is, that it was like the effect of a bugle and a cornet answering each other at a great distance over water.