Yet, there, in front of him, was the light figure again. It was Windekind! It surely was! His radiant face was turned toward him, and the lips were parted as if calling him. With his right hand he was beckoning. In his left he held aloft some object. In the tips of his slender fingers he held it, and it glittered and sparkled. With a glad cry of joy and yearning, Johannes sped toward the beloved apparition. But with laughing face and waving hand, it floated before him, still beckoning him on. Sometimes it would drift low, and lingeringly skim the ground, to ascend again lightly and swiftly, and float farther off, like a feathery seed borne on by the wind. Johannes himself longed to rise and fly as he had done long ago, in his dreams. But the earth held his feet, and his steps were heavy on the grassy ground. He was obliged to pick his way painfully through the bushes--their foliage rustling and scratching along his clothes--their branches brushing across his face. Panting with weariness he had to climb the mossy slopes of the dunes. Yet he followed untiringly--his eye never turned from Windekind's radiant apparition--from what was gleaming in the upraised hand. There he was, in the middle of the dunes. The wild-roses, with their thousands of pale yellow cups, were blossoming in the glowing valleys, and gazing at the sunlight. And many other flowers were blooming there--bright blue, yellow, and purple. A sultry heat filled the little hollows, cherishing the fragrant herbs. Strong, resinous odors hung in the air. Johannes smelled them as he went--he smelled the wild thyme, and the dry reindeer-moss which crackled under his feet. It was intoxicatingly delightful. And he saw mottled field-moths fluttering in front of the lovely image he was following; also little black and red butterflies, and the sand-eye--the merry little moth with satiny wings of the most delicate blue. Golden beetles that live on the wild-rose whirred around his head, and big bumblebees danced and hummed all about in the dry, scorched grass. How delightful it was! How happy he would be if only he were with Windekind. But Windekind swept farther and farther away. He followed breathlessly. The big, pale-leaved thorn-bushes held him back, and hurt him with their briars. The fuzzy, silvery torch-plants shook their tall heads as he pushed them aside from his course. He scrambled up the sandy barriers, and wounded his hands with the prickly broom. He pushed on through the low birch-wood where the grass was knee-high, and the water-birds flew up from the little pools which glistened among the shrubs. Dense, white-flowered hawthorns mingled their fragrance with that of the birch-leaves and the mint, which grew in great profusion in the swampy soil. But there came an end to woods, and verdure, and fragrant flowers. Only the singular, pale blue sea-holly, growing amid the sear, colorless heath-grass.