er was
not the best in the world; and she expressed the sincerest regret as she
told me that there were no more in the house. Like an invalid I fretted
at my wish not being granted, and spoke out.

"But Thekla told me the vintage was not till the fourteenth; and you
have a vineyard close beyond the garden on the slope of the hill out
there, have you not?"

"Yes; and grapes for the gathering. But perhaps the gentleman does not
know our laws. Until the vintage--(the day of beginning the vintage is
fixed by the Grand Duke, and advertised in the public papers)--until
the vintage, all owners of vineyards may only go on two appointed days
in every week to gather their grapes; on those two days (Tuesdays and
Fridays this year) they must gather enough for the wants of their
families; and if they do not reckon rightly, and gather short measure,
why they have to go without. And these two last days the Half-Moon has
been besieged with visitors, all of whom have asked for grapes. But
to-morrow the gentleman can have as many as he will; it is the day for
gathering them."

"What a strange kind of paternal law," I grumbled out. "Why is it so
ordained? Is it to secure the owners against pilfering from their
unfenced vineyards?"

"I am sure I cannot tell," she replied. "Country people in these
villages have strange customs in many ways, as I daresay the English
gentleman has perceived. If he would come to Worms he would see a
different kind of life."

"But not a view like this," I replied, caught by a sudden change of
light--some cloud passing away from the sun, or something. Right outside
of the windows was, as I have so often said, the garden. Trained
plum-trees with golden leaves, great bushes of purple, Michaelmas daisy,
late flowering roses, apple-trees partly stripped of their rosy fruit,
but still with enough left on their boughs to require the props set to
support the luxuriant burden; to the left an arbour covered over with
honeysuckle and other sweet-smelling creepers--all bounded by a low gray
stone wall which opened out upon the steep vineyard, that stretched up
the hill beyond, one hill of a series rising higher and higher into the
purple distance. "Why is there a rope with a bunch of straw tied in it
stretched across the opening of the garden into the vineyard?" I
inquired, as my eye suddenly caught upon the object.

"It is the country way of showing that no one must pass along that path.
To-morrow the gentleman wi