outs of joy to hail these precious things. Prisoners
were set free in honor of their coming; and for my own part I mind the
day full well, by reason that I put off my black mourning weed and went
forth in a colored holiday garb for the first time in a long while.

If I had, in truth, been able by good courage to shake off in due time
the oppressing weight of my grief, I owed it in no small measure to
the forest-whither we went forth, now as heretofore, to sojourn in the
spring and autumn seasons--and to its magic healing. How many a time
have I rested under its well-known trees and silently looked back on the
past. And, when I mind me of those days, I often ask myself whether the
real glad times themselves or those hours of calmer joy in remembrance
were indeed the better.

As I sat in the woods, thinking and dreaming, there was plenty for the
eye to see and the ear to hear. The clouds flew across in silence, and
the soft green at my feet, with all that grew on tree and bush, in
the grass, and by the brink of the pool, made up a peaceful world,
innocently fair and full of precious charm. Here there was nought to
remind me of the stir of mankind, with its haste and noise and fighting
and craving, and that was a delight; nor did the woodland sounds.--The
song of birds, the hum of chafers and bees, the whisper of leaves, and
all the rush and rustle of the forest were its mother-tongue.

Yet, not so! There was in truth one human soul of whom I was ever minded
while thinking and dreaming in these woods through whom I had first
known the joy of loving, and that was the youth whose home was here, for
whose return my aunt longed day and night, whose favorite songs I was
ever bidden to sing to my uncle when he would take the oars in
his strong old hands of an evening, and row us on the pool-he who
peradventure had long since followed my lover, and was dead in some
far-off land.

Ann, who was ever diligent, took less pleasure in idle dreaming; she
would ever carry a book or some broidery in her hand. Or she would abide
alone with my aunt; and whereas my aunt now held her to be her fellow in
sorrow, and might talk with her of the woe of thinking of the dearest
on earth as far away and half lost, they grew closer to each other, and
there was bitter grief when our duty took us back to the town once
more. At home likewise Herdegen was ever in our minds, nevertheless the
sunshine was as bright and the children's faces as dear as he