It was an early hour of a murky day in autumn. Fogs were brewing in the mountains around Fichtenau, and hung so low that the traveller on the high road, which makes a steep ascent close behind the village and loses itself in thick woods, could scarcely distinguish the pine-trees on the edge of the forest. By the wayside, at a place where two roads crossed each other, sat Xenobia and Czika. Their faithful companion in all their wanderings, the little donkey, with the red feathers on his head and the scarlet saddle-cloth on his back, was grazing peacefully in the ditch on the short, ill-flavored grass. He did not seem to relish it much; he shook his head indignantly, as if he wanted to say: I am frugal, but everything has its limits. Nor did the gypsy woman and her child seem to enjoy the weather any more. They sat there, each wrapped in a large coarse shawl, silent and motionless, like a couple of Egyptian statues. This attitude, natural as it might be to the woman, had something very uncanny in so young a child as Czika. And Xenobia herself was no longer the hearty woman whom Oswald had seen on that afternoon in October in the forest near Berkow. Was it the effect of the weather, or was it sickness and sorrow--but her features had little now of that haughty energy which formerly made them so remarkable. Her brow was furrowed with small lines; her eyes had sunk deep into their orbits and did not shine with the same brightness as of old, as she now glanced in the direction from which her sharp ear heard the noise of a carriage comings from Fichtenau. "That is not theirs," she said, letting her head sink again. A few minutes later a well-closed travelling carriage, drawn by two horses, appeared rising out of the fog. On the box, by the side of the driver, sat an old man with a long, silver-gray moustache. He turned round continually, to cast a look at the inside of the carriage, and to smile respectfully and yet amicably at the occupants--a lady and a boy. Thus he had failed to notice the gypsy woman, who had stepped forward as she saw the great lady in the carriage, and asked for alms. What was his amazement therefore, when he saw that the lady suddenly called to him to stop the horses, exhibiting all the signs of extreme consternation, and that she was standing in the road itself long before the horses could be checked. "Isabel, it is you! and the Czika! My God, how fortunate!" cried Melitta, seizing both hands of the gypsy. "Now I shall not let you go again. My God, how very fortunate!" and the young lady embraced the gypsy woman with tears in her eyes. But the latter freed herself almost violently, and stepping back some little distance she crossed her arms on her bosom and looked at Melitta with a suspicious, almost hostile glance. "Do you not know me, Isabel?" said Melitta; "it is I! Have you forgotten the days at Berkow five years ago? That is my Julius, there! And how tall and how beautiful the Czika has grown."