They saw her return to the Castle with her head held high, stepping over the puddles in the muddy road with her thin shoes. A day or two after a letter arrived from Johannes. He was coming home in a little over a month, when he had finished another new book. He had got on well all this time, his new work went rapidly, all life had been surging through his brain.... The Miller betook himself to the Castle. On the way he found a pocket handkerchief marked with Victoria's initials; she had dropped it the other evening. Miss Victoria was upstairs, but a maid offered to take her a message--what was it? The Miller declined. He would rather wait. At last Victoria came. "I hear you want to speak to me?" she said, opening the door of a room. The Miller went in, handed her a handkerchief and said: "And then we have had a letter from Johannes." A bright look passed over her face for an instant, a brief instant. She answered: "Thank you very much. Yes, the handkerchief is mine." "He is coming home again," the Miller went on, almost in a whisper. Her look turned cold. "Speak up, Miller; who is coming?" she said. "Johannes." "Johannes. Well, what then?" "Oh, why--we thought I ought to tell you. We talked about it, my wife and I, and she thought so too. You were asking the day before yesterday if he was coming home this spring. Yes, he's coming." "Then I am sure you must be glad," said the young lady. "When is he coming?" "In a month." "I see. Well, there was nothing else?" "No. We only thought, as you had asked.... No, there was nothing else. It was only that." The Miller had dropped his voice again. She went out with him. In the passage they met her father and she said to him as they passed, aloud and in a casual tone: "The Miller tells me Johannes is coming home again. You remember Johannes, don't you?" And the Miller went out of the Castle gate and promised himself that never, never again would he be such a fool as to listen to his wife when she wanted to poke her nose into secrets. He'd let her know that. VII Once he had wanted to make a fishing-rod of the slender rowan tree by the mill-pond; now many years had passed and the tree had grown thicker than his arm. He looked at it in wonder and walked on. The impenetrable wilderness of bracken still grew along the bank of the stream, a whole forest on whose floor the cattle had trampled regular paths over which the fronds of the bracken closed. He strode through the wilderness as in the days of his childhood, swimming with his hands and feeling his way with his feet. Insects and creeping things fled before the mighty man. Up by the granite quarry he found black-thorn, wood anemones and violets. He plucked a quantity, their homely scent recalled to him bygone days. In the distance the mountain ridges showed in a purple haze and on the far side of the bay the cuckoo was beginning to call.