She waited, clinging to a post and setting her teeth. But he did not come. He ordered a horse to be brought out, and his words of fault-finding and command darted hither and thither like lightning-flashes. The milkmaids, too, heard the master's voice. Some knew it, and those who didn't could not be in a moment's doubt as to whom it belonged. They nudged each other with their elbows, and their faces expressed alarm. When Hertha heard the sound of horse's feet dying away beneath the courtyard gateway, she ventured to look out at the door. Of him she could not see much, but he was riding on her white mare. On her mare! What joy! She watched the measuring of the milk with an absent eye. One part of it went to Münsterberg in the milk-cart, a second portion came up to the house, a third was for the farm servants. The midday and evening milking supplied the cheese-makers. When all was finished, she stepped again into the morning air. The sun, which had risen above the haystacks, cast its fiery beams on the yard. Down by the pond, where the velvet bulrushes glistened with silvery dew, ducks were quacking. The dogs struggled, straining on their chains, to get to her. She took no notice of them. She passed the brewery, from which proceeded a stream of barm which filled the surrounding air with a cellar-like odour, and entered the open fields by the back gate. Here a few patches of wheat had been cut because they came handy to Uncle, but farther away the corn stood over-ripe with rotting ears. In thought she followed Leo's ride with an anxious conscience; as if she were to blame for all the mischief. He must have come by this spot and that, and found one as neglected as the other. Ground had been left from last winter unploughed. Oats had been sown too late; the clover was nearly overgrown by grass and weeds. Amongst the stubble glittered a fine spangle of cobwebs, spreading a prescience of autumn over the flat stretches of land. A wild cat with head ducked forward was slinking along the furrows. Hertha was vexed that she hadn't a gun with her so that she might singe the good-for-nothing's fur. Then gradually her zeal evaporated, and a gentle dreaminess stole over her. She saw him again us she had always seen him ever since grandmamma had begun to enchant her eyes by drawing his picture. Pale, melancholy, fiery-eyed, rushing in a frenzy of restlessness about foreign countries, tormented by the shade of the slain; hunted from pillar to post by nostalgia and vain longing for rest and peace.