The falcon was always there, and still flew like a white banner before him, as it had done on the very first day. But now Eric no more followed the shine on its wings; he was following a lowly maiden who held his beating heart within her careless hand. He passed through many villages such as Radu had described: the savage dogs rushed out and surrounded their wandering procession, the maize-thatched cottages had their doors wide open, and it was true that the tall sunflowers could peep in at the tiny windows, and that the maidens sat upon the thresholds drawing their tireless needles through the snowy linen that lay in their laps. The peasants looked at the earth-coloured travellers with glances of disdain; and seldom did a kindly welcome greet them as they came. Only for Eric they made an exception, and more than one dark-eyed girl would have given much to keep him at her side. Autumn was turning the leaves into glorious colours. The woods were a never-ending marvel of red, gold, and brown. On the freshly reaped maize-fields the Indian corn lay in small pyramids of ripest orange. The peasants sat about in groups singing the songs of harvest, whilst the early night did its best to hurry the glowing sunsets out of the flaming sky. Always smaller grew the hope in our wanderer's heart, always more weary were the endless roads. Stella still had her eyes turned upon things he could not see. He had not been able to make her grasp the fact that she had a stranger at her side. Each day he brought her another wreath for her burnished tresses--a wreath that he wound with his artist fingers from whatever flowers he could find along his road. They were becoming scarcer and rarer because of the descending autumn that lay like a hush over the tired world. He made them of pale-tinted crocuses that hung upon her forehead like tired sighs--he bound them with the brightest leaves of the season that resembled the spreading sunsets he so loved at the end of the day. Often he had plucked shining berries that surrounded her waxen brow like heavy drops of blood. And one day the wreath he brought her was all feathery and white, plaited with the fluffy ghosts of the wild clematis that climbs over rock and tree. On a morning when the clouds hung heavy over their heads he pressed above her lovely face a garland of sloe-berries entwined with grey leaves of the weeping-willow; they fell about her delicate temples, touching her rounded cheeks with loving caresses as a mother's hand would do. Once as she sat on a hard heap of stones, spent after the tramp of the day, he left her to glean from the barren fields ripe ears of corn that had been scattered by the reapers on their way. He made them into a golden crown which he laid at her feet in the dust, looking into her eyes, trembling under the weight of his love.