"You'll laugh at me; but just as the fruit-trees look like the fruits they bear, so is it also with people; one can tell what they are at once by looking at them. But the trees, to be sure, always have honest faces, while people can dissemble theirs. But I am talking nonsense, am I not?" "No, you have not kept geese for nothing," said the lad; and there was a strange mixture of feelings in the tone of his voice. "I like to talk with you. I should give you a kiss, if I were not afraid of doing what is wrong." Barefoot trembled all over. She stooped to break off a flower, but did not break it. There was a long pause, and then the lad went on: "We shall most likely never meet again, and so it is best as it is." Hand in hand the two went back to the dancing-room. There they danced once more together without saying a word to each other, and when the dance was over, the young man again led her to the table, and said: "Now I shall say good-by. But first you must get your breath, and then drink once more." He handed her the glass, and when she set it down again, he said: "You must drain it, for my sake, to the very bottom." Amrei drank and drank; and when the glass was empty in her hand, she looked around--the stranger was gone! She went down and stood in front of the house; and there she saw him again, not far away, riding off on his white horse; but he did not look back. The mist hung over the valley like a veil of clouds, and the sun had already set. Barefoot said to herself, almost aloud: "I wish tomorrow would never come, but that it would always be today--always today!" And then she stood still, lost in dreams. The night came on quickly. The moon, looking like a thin sickle, was resting on the summits of the dark mountains. One little Bernese wagon after another drove away. Barefoot went to find her master's chaise, to which the horses were now being hitched. Then Rose came and told her brother that she had promised some young people of her village to go home in company with them. And it was understood as a matter of course that the farmer could not drive home alone with the maid. And so the little Bernese wagon went rattling off toward home with a single occupant. Rose must have seen Barefoot, but she acted as if she were not there. And so Barefoot once more wandered forth along the road on which the stranger had departed. Whither could he have gone? How many hundred villages and hamlets there were along that road, and to which one was he bound? Barefoot found the place again where he had first accosted her in the morning; she repeated aloud to herself his salutation, and the answer she had given him. And once more she sat down behind the hazel hedge, where in the morning she had slept and dreamt. A yellowhammer sat on a slender spray, and its six notes sounded just as if it were saying: "And why art thou still here? And why art thou still here?"