el. He therefore awaited the
arrival of his guide with impatience.

The wound on his head was quite healed; though the blow had been severe
enough to deprive him of his senses for many days, it was not deep,
owing to the feathers of his cap and the thickness of his hair having
blunted the sharpness of the cut. He had recovered also of the wounds
on his legs and arms, and the only inconvenience he suffered from the
result of that unfortunate night, was a debility arising from the loss
of blood, and lying so long upon the bed of sickness. But his
constitution hourly gained strength, his natural buoyancy of spirit
resumed its sway, and his only thought was to proceed onwards to his
destination.

He was, however, compelled to summon up all his spirits, to make the
tedious hours he was still doomed to pass in his present quarters at
all bearable. The daughter of the fifer, perceiving how the prolonged
absence of her father distressed him, did her best to beguile the time
by amusing him with her cheerful conversation. The delay was
nevertheless not without its advantages, for he became acquainted with
the character and life of the Swabian peasant. Their manners and
dialect were quite new to him. His countrymen, the Franconians,
although bordering so near on this part of Wuertemberg, were to his mind
a race more subtle and crafty,--in many respects less polished,--than
these. But the kind-hearted honesty of the Swabians, which their looks,
address, and actions bespoke,--their cheerful industry, their
cleanliness and order, giving to poverty a respectable, indeed a
substantial, appearance; in short, everything he saw induced him to
think they possessed more intrinsic good qualities than their shrewder
neighbours.

He was very much taken with the unaffected simplicity of the young
girl's talk. Her mother might scold as much as she liked, and remind
her continually of the high rank of the knight, she was not to be
deterred from entertaining him, and she was particularly bent upon not
giving up her secret plan to ascertain whether she or her mother were
right in their views respecting the white and blue scarf. Upon this
subject she had her own thoughts, arising out of the following
circumstance:

One night when Albert was very ill, she had remained up late to keep
her father company, who was watching by his bed-side. But having fallen
asleep over her work, she was aroused, it might have been about ten
o'clock, by a noise in