How fast Time returned! Each step made the change of a day, and every mile brought them five years back toward youth. When they came down to the streams that ran in the bed of each valley, the ferryman and his wife felt their prime return to them. He saw the gold come back into her locks, and she the brown into his. Their lips became open to laughter and song. “Oh, how good,” they cried, “to have lived all our lives poor, to come at last to this!” They drank water out of the streams, and tasted the fruit from the trees that grew over them; till presently, being tired for mere joy, they lay down in the grass to rest. They slept hand within hand and cheek against cheek, and, when they woke, found themselves quite young again, just at the age when they were first married in the years gone by. The ferryman started up and felt the desire of life strong in his blood. “Come!” he said to his wife, “or we shall become too young with lingering here. Now we have regained our youth, let us go back into the world once more!” His wife hung upon his hand, “Are we not happy enough,” she asked, “as it is? Why should we return?” “But,” he cried, “we shall grow too young; now we have youth and life at its best let us return! Time goes too fast with us; we are in danger of it carrying us away.” She said no further word, but followed up toward the way by which they had entered. And yet, in spite of her wish to remain, as she went her young blood frisked. Presently coming to the top of a hill, they set off running and racing; at the bottom they looked at each other, and saw themselves boy and girl once more. “We have stayed here too long!” said the ferryman, and pressed on. “Oh, the birds,” sighed she, “and the flowers, and the grassy hills to run on, we are leaving behind!” But still the boy had the wish for a man’s life again, and urged her on; and still with every step they grew younger and younger. At length, two small children, they came to the border of that enchanted land, and saw beyond the world bleak and wintry and without leaf. Only a further step was wanted to bring them face to face once more with the hard battle of life. Tears rose in the child-wife’s eyes: “If we go,” she said, “we can never return!” Her husband looked long at her wistful face; he, too, was more of a child now, and was forgetting his wish to be a man again. He took hold of her hand and turned round with her, and together they faced once more the flowery orchards, and the happy watered valleys. Away down there light streams tinkled, and birds called. Downwards they went, slowly at first, then with dancing feet, as with shoutings and laughter they ran.