d a while with her, and said good-night.

How sweet it had been to watch her ox-like eyes shyly seeking his, to
press her dimpled hand and feel his own great strength. Surely he
loved her better than he did himself. There could be no doubt of it. He
pictured her in trouble, in danger from the savage soldiery that came
and went like evil shadows through these pleasant Saxon valleys, leaving
death and misery behind them: burnt homesteads; wild-eyed women, hiding
their faces from the light. Would he not for her sake give his life?

So it was made clear to him that little Elsa was his love.

Until next morning, when, raising his eyes from the whirling saw, there
stood before him Margot, laughing. Margot, mischief-loving, wayward,
that would ever be to him the baby he had played with, nursed, and
comforted. Margot weary! Had he not a thousand times carried her
sleeping in his arms. Margot in danger! At the mere thought his face
flushed an angry scarlet.

All that afternoon Ulrich communed with himself, tried to understand
himself, and could not. For Elsa and Margot and Hedwig were not the only
ones by a long way. What girl in the village did he not love, if it came
to that: Liesel, who worked so hard and lived so poorly, bullied by her
cross-grained granddam. Susanna, plain and a little crotchety, who had
never had a sweetheart to coax the thin lips into smiles. The little
ones--for so they seemed to long, lanky Ulrich, with their pleasant
ways--Ulrich smiled as he thought of them--how should a man love one
more than another?

The Herr Pfarrer shook his head and sighed.

"That is not love. Gott in Himmel! think what it would lead to? The good
God never would have arranged things so. You love one; she is the only
woman in the world for you."

"But you, yourself, Herr Pastor, you have twice been married," suggested
the puzzled wheelwright.

"But one at a time, Ulrich--one at a time. That is a very different
thing."

Why should it not come to him, alone among men? Surely it was a
beautiful thing, this love; a thing worthy of a man, without which a man
was but a useless devourer of food, cumbering the earth.

So Ulrich pondered, pausing from his work one drowsy summer's afternoon,
listening to the low song of the waters. How well he knew the winding
Muhlde's merry voice. He had worked beside it, played beside it all his
life. Often he would sit and talk to it as to an old friend, reading
answers in its changing tones