"Close beside him stood a slim, strong grass-stem swaying gently in the evening wind. He grasped it, and hugged it tightly with his six little crooked feet. It seemed as tall as a giant viewed from below, and fearfully steep. But the May-bug was determined to reach the very tip of it. "'This is a calling,' he thought, and he began to climb, pluckily. It was slow work--he often slipped back; but still he made progress, and at last, when he had climbed to the tip-top and was swinging and swaying there, he felt content and happy. What a view! It seemed to him as if he overlooked the world. How blissful it was to be surrounded, on all sides, by the air! He breathed it in eagerly. How marvelously it cheered him up! He would go still higher! "In ecstasy he lifted up his shields, and made his filmy wings quiver. Higher he would go! Higher! Again he fluttered his wings--his feet let loose the grass-stem, and--oh, joy!--He was flying, free and clear, in the still, warm evening air!" "And then?" asked Johannes. "The continuation is not cheerful. I will tell it you a little later." They had flown away over the pond. A pair of belated white butterflies fluttered along with them. "Where are you going, elves?" they asked. "To the big wild-rose that blossoms on yonder hill." "We will go, too! We will go, too!" In the distance, the rose-bush with its many pale-yellow satiny flowers was already visible. The buds were red, and the open roses showed little stripes of the same color, in token of the time when they still were buds. In solitary calm, this sweet wild-rose bloomed, and filled the region with its marvelous fragrance. So delicious is this that the dune-elves live upon it alone. The butterflies fluttered up to it, and kissed flower after flower. "We come to entrust a treasure to you," said Windekind. "Will you take care of it for us?" "Why not? why not?" whispered the wild-rose. "Watching does not tire me, and I do not think to go away from here, if no one carries me off. And I have sharp thorns." Then came the field-mouse--the cousin of the mouse at the school. He dug a passage under the roots of the rose-bush, and pulled in the little key. "If you want it back again, you must call on me. And then the rose need not be harmed." The rose interlocked its thorny twigs close over the entrance, and took a solemn oath to guard the trust. The butterflies were witnesses. The next morning, Johannes woke up in his own little bed, with Presto, the clock, and the wall-hangings. The cord around his neck, and the little key upon it, had disappeared. IV "Oh, boys, boys! How dreadfully tedious it is in summer!" sighed one of the three big stoves which stood together, fretting, in a dark corner of the garret in the old house. "For weeks I have not seen a living soul nor heard a sensible word. And that emptiness within. It is horrible!" "I am full of spider-webs," said the other. "In winter that would not happen."