Sha'n't go too far away;
The little girls that are good little girls
Must go as far as they."

Ivo went silently to the field in which he had once spent a whole day
ploughing with Nat: it seemed as if some clue to his whereabouts must
be hidden among the stones. He envied his brothers who were at work
here, who shared their joys and sorrows at a common board, who had no
one to obey but their natural superiors.

On his return to the convent he attached himself still more closely to
Clement, as if to indemnify himself for the loss of his earlier friend.

The last summer spent in Ehingen was a little less monotonous than the
others. Clement, whose home was in a largely Protestant town, had
acquaintances among the pupils of the neighboring Protestant convent,
(for by that name the classical school was still called,) of
Blaubeuren, who were a little less rigidly restrained than those of
Ehingen. They sometimes came to Ehingen and went to the principal, one
of them saying that he was a "fellow-countryman" of Clement's, and the
other that he sustained the same mysterious relation to Ivo, and so on:
the principal allowed the "countrymen" to make a half-holiday of it:
they would saunter to the next village, and there, with festive
songs and over the social glass, Ivo exchanged many a pledge of
good-fellowship with the Protestant conventuaries. Neither they nor he
were free,--although the Blaubeuren men had one or two immunities more
than the others.

The time of student-life stood before the eyes of all these youths much
like a taper-girt Christmas-tree before the visions of a German baby:
they stretched out their hands impatiently to grasp the gilded nuts
suspended from the boughs; and, though their clerical vocation was
destined to cut down much of the liberties to which they looked
forward, yet even what remained was far too slow in coming.

At last autumn set in. On the eve of their departure, Ivo and Clement
went to the hawthorn where their friendship took its rise, and each of
them broke off a twig and set it in his cap: then, taking each other's
hand, they renewed their vow of eternal devotion. Ivo also promised to
pay Clement a visit at Crailsheim during the holidays.

To quit a place of long abode, whether we have been happy or unhappy in
living there, is always attended with regret: the mantle of the past
drops away, and we know that we shall never return to the spot the same
as we leave it: the