Indoors sat the gardener's wife, knitting black stockings. Over the peat fire in the fireplace hung a big kettle of boiling water. On the mat by the fire lay a cat with folded forepaws--just as Simon sat when Johannes left home. Johannes was given a seat by the fire that he might dry his feet. "Tick, tack!--Tick, tack!" said the big, hanging clock. Johannes looked at the steam which rose, hissing, from the kettle, and to the little tongues of flame that skipped nimbly and whimsically over the peat. "Now I am among human beings," thought he. It was not bad. He felt calm and contented. They were good and kind, and asked what he would like best to do. "I would like best to stay here," he replied. Here he was at peace, but if he went home, sorrow and tears would follow. He would be obliged to maintain silence, and they would tell him that he had been naughty. He would have to see all the past over again, and think once more of everything. He did long for his little room, for his father, for Presto--but he would rather endure the silent longing where he was, than the painful, racking return. It seemed as if here he might be thinking of Windekind, while at home he could not. Windekind had surely gone away now--far away to the sunny land where the palms were bending over the blue seas. He would do penance here, and wait for him. And so he implored the two good people to let him stay. He would be obedient and work for them. He would help care for the garden and the flowers, but only for this winter;--for he hoped in his heart that Windekind would return in the spring. The gardener and his wife thought that Johannes had run away because he was not treated well at home. They sympathized with him, and promised to let him stay. He remained, and helped them in the garden and among the flowers. He was given a little bedroom, with a blue wooden bedstead. From it, mornings, he could see the wet, yellow linden leaves slipping along the window-panes; and nights, the dark boughs rocking to and fro--with the stars playing hide-and-seek behind them. He gave names to the stars, and called the brightest Windekind. He told his history to the flowers--almost all of which he had known at home; the big, serious asters, the gaudy zinias, and the white chrysanthemums which continued to bloom so late in the rude autumn. When all the other flowers were dead the chrysanthemums still stood--and even after the first snowfall, when Johannes came one morning early to look at them, they lifted their cheerful faces and said: "Yes, we are still here. You didn't think we would be, _did_ you?" They were very brave, but two days later they were all dead.