Martella did not become attached to any one in the house except Rothfuss, whom she was constantly plying with questions about Ernst's childhood. When in pleasant evenings during the week, and on Sunday afternoons in clear weather, the youths and maidens would march through the village, with their merry songs, she would sit with Rothfuss on the bench by the stable, or, unattended by any companion save her dog, would be up in the woods that lay back of our house. When she had any special request, she would communicate it through Rothfuss. Among other things, she wanted to go out into the forest with the wood-cutters. From her thirteenth year she had wielded the axe, and could use it as cleverly as the men. We did not grant this wish of hers. Her craving for knowledge was insatiable, and I marvelled at the patience and equanimity with which my wife told her everything she wanted to know. Things to which we had become accustomed were to her occasions of the liveliest surprise. This did not seem to change, for she never could get used to what with us had, through daily habit, become a matter of course. To her all seemed a marvel. Her glance was full of courage. Her voice seemed so full of sincerity, that her strangest utterances required no added assurance of their truthfulness. Her laughter was so hearty that it seemed contagious. Rothfuss was quite proud that he could control Martella, just as he did the two bays that he had raised from the time they were foals, and delighted to speak of the fact, that our youngest--as he called Ernst--was the best of marksmen. He had secured the best prize. For there could be no other girl so wise and merry as Martella. And she was so full of merry capers that the very cows looked around and lowed, as if to say, "We, too, would be glad to laugh with you, if we only could. But, alas! we cannot. We have not the bellows to do it with." She had named her calf "Muscat." She would nurse it as if it were a younger sister. She maintained that it was a perfect marvel of health and wisdom, and that the old cow was jealous, and tried to butt her because she had noticed that the calf had greater love for Martella than for its own mother. There was one point on which she and Rothfuss always quarrelled. She had an inexplicable aversion to America, of which Rothfuss always spoke as if it were Paradise itself. The manner in which Lisbeth, the locksmith's widow, had been provided for, was his chief argument in its favor. "None but a free state would provide so well for the families of the men killed in battle. How different our Germans are about that." Towards my wife and myself, Martella was respectful, but diffident. Ernst came to us but twice during the summer, remaining but a few hours each time. He wanted Martella to walk or drive around the neighborhood with him, but she refused, saying "that she would not leave home. She had been away long enough."