But this happy life in the castle lasted only a few years. The second wife began to sicken: she lost her fresh colour; the doctor said the keen mountain-air did not agree with her, but she would not leave the beautiful country where she was so happy. At last, one autumn, she had to follow the doctor's advice. It is just twelve years ago now; her cough grew so bad that she herself saw that she could not spend another winter in the castle, around which the cold northern blasts swept continually. She went away with her husband and her little daughter, then six years old. When the carriage drove through Tausens, all the villagers crowded about it to have a last word from the lovely lady, and she spoke to every one as kindly as she did to the judge himself. She never came back. The doctor said she followed his advice too late. In Italy, at Nizza, they buried her. She died there hardly a year after she took leave of Tausens. In a short time the master and his little girl returned. He brought a governess with him for his daughter, but she found it too lonely at the old castle. She soon went away again, and the master lived on alone, and the poor child would have had no woman to speak to if the judge's wife had not taken pity on it. She talked seriously to the Herr about his duty to his child, and told him how wrong it was to pay no attention to her education. And so the Herr took the little girl to Vienna to school. After that he led a more solitary life than ever at Castle Reifenstein, never leaving it except to go to Vienna three or four times a year to see his child; the rest of the time he spent without one human being to speak to: even the doctor was not allowed to go often to the castle. And thus it has gone on until the present day, for even when a year ago Fräulein Hilda came home from Vienna, her father never altered his way of life. He sits up there in his gloomy old room with his books and plants and worms; he has grown old and feeble, so that he cannot take long walks among the mountains, but only in the castle garden, and he studies all day long,--his daughter is with him only at dinner and in the evenings. But if he is not changed, the Fräulein's return has brought back the golden time for the poor people in Tausens; the same time that there was while her mother was alive. Fräulein Hilda is the image of her mother; just as lovely, but fresher healthier and stronger; just as kind, but merrier and a wee hit wild,--no rock is too steep and no mountain too high for her. Not a boy in the village can outstrip her in a mountain walk, and she clambers about everywhere by herself, looking for the plants which she thinks will give her father pleasure. If any one is ill, she is upon the spot to aid wherever help is necessary. She is a heretic to be sure like her mother, but every one loves her, and the poorest most of all.