Nevertheless she seemed to have bewitched all the young men. Not only her possessions;--no, she--she herself with all her strangeness was what the lads desired to win. When she stood before them, tall, as though standing on higher ground, slim and yet so strongly and proudly built that her close-laced bodice could hardly contain her nobly-moulded form, when she raised her arm, strong and nervous as a youth's, against them threateningly, whilst a lightning flash of scorn flamed like a challenge from her large black eyes--then a wild fire of love and strife seized the lads, and they would wrestle with her as if for life or death only to win a single kiss. But then woe to them, for they had not the strength to conquer this woman, and must go their way with scorn and derision. He was yet to come who alone could cope with her--would he ever come? Enough, she awaited him. "He that can say of me I ever gave him a kiss, him will I marry, but he that's not strong enough to win that kiss by force--Wallburga Stromminger was not born for him!" she said haughtily one day, and soon the saying was reported in all the surrounding neighbourhood, and the young men came from far and near to try their luck and take her at her word. It became indeed a point of honour to be a suitor of the wild Wallburga, as any rash adventure is thought honourable by a man of strength and courage. Soon there was not a man of marriageable age in all the three valleys who had not striven to conquer Wally and to wrest the kiss from her, but not one had succeeded. And she triumphed in the wild game and in her mighty strength, for she knew that she was talked of far and near, and that Joseph would often hear of her; and she thought that now he must at last think it worth the trouble to come and carry off the prize, if it were only to prove his strength--as that day when he had gone to slay the bear. If only he were here, she thought, why should he not fall in love with her like all the others,--above all, if she showed to him how sweet and friendly she could be? But he never came. Instead, there came one day to the "Stag" which adjoined Wally's kitchen-garden, the messenger from Vent. Wally, who was at that moment weeding, heard Joseph's name spoken and listened behind the hedge to the messenger's narration.