er ceased to stride up and down the
room, now stepped up to the old man.

"Sit still where you are, Herr Schoepf," he said. "Stay here where it
is cool until you are thoroughly rested. Meantime I will go and find
the girl, and talk to her. She has a liking for me, possibly because I
have never tried to win her favor."

With these words he left the old gentleman. He first searched through
the house and garden after the frightened bird, but finally had to make
up his mind to go into the wood after her.

After much unsuccessful searching and calling, he finally saw her white
face and red hair shimmering from out the green shadows, in a little
cleared spot on the gentle slope of the grove, from which she could
command a view of the entrance of the park.

"What a trouble you are making, Zenz!" he shouted to her. "What are you
running about in the lonely wood for all the forenoon, when there is
enough to be done in the house? Old Katie has worked as hard to find
you as if you had been a needle in a haystack."

The girl had hastily sprung from the mossy seat on which she had been
crouching, and seemed to be holding herself in readiness to dart away.
Her round cheeks had suddenly flushed crimson.

"Is he still there?" she asked.

"Who? Don't be so childish, Zenz. The idea of running away from a good
old man, as if he were Satan himself!"

"I won't go home till he has gone," she said, with a defiant shake of
her head. "I know what he wants. He wants to lock me up in his hateful,
lonely house, where no sun or air gets in. But I have never done him
any wrong, and I won't go--I won't bear it--I'd rather have him kill me
right here."

"You're out of your senses, girl! Do you know him? What do you know
about him?"

She did not answer immediately. He saw how wildly her young breast
heaved, how her eyes were fixed on the ground, and how her teeth bit
the little twig she held in her hand.

"He is the father of my mother!" she finally burst out, her face taking
on a look of intense hatred. "He drove my poor dear mother out of his
house because of me--that is, before I ever came into the world. Oh, he
is so stern! My mother never dared to go back to him as long as she
lived. Then, when she was going to die, she wrote a letter to her
father asking him to take care of me, and she made me promise by all
that was holy to carry this letter to my grandfather as soon as she was
dead; and I promised I would, though I never could get