Kökensee lay three miles along the highroad between Meuk and Wiesenhausen, and they could see the spire of its little church over the fields on the left the whole way. The road, made with as few curves as possible, undulated gently up and down between rye-fields. It was carefully planted on each side with mountain ashes, on that day in full flower, and was white and hard as though there had been no rain for a long while. The wind blew gaily over the rye; the sky was flecked with small white clouds. Ingeborg could see for miles. And there were dark lines of forest, and flashes of yellow where the broom grew, and shining bits of water, and larks quivering out joy, and everywhere on the higher places busy windmills, and the whole world seemed to laugh and flutter and sing. "It's beautiful--oh, beautiful!" she said. "Beautiful? I tell you what is beautiful, Little One--the fat red soil of your girlhood's home. The fat red soil and the steady drip, drip of the heavens." And he bent forward and inquired of Johann when it had rained last, and became very gloomy on hearing that it was three weeks ago, and said things to himself in German. They seemed to be unpastoral things, for Ingeborg saw Johann's ears lifted up by what was evidently, in the front of his face, being a grin. A weather-beaten sign-post with one bent arm pointed crookedly down a field-track at right angles to the road, and with a lurch and a heave they tilted round the corner. There was an immediate ceasing of sound. She could now hear all sorts of little birds singing besides larks--chaffinches, tits, yellow-hammers, black-caps. The carriage ploughed along slowly through the deep sand between rye that grew more reluctantly every yard. The horses were completely sobered and covered with sweat. Before them on an upward slope was Kökensee, one long straggling street of low cottages lying up against the sunset, its church behind it, and near the church two linden trees which were the trees, she knew for she had often made him tell her, in front of her home.