and Lottchen set out for their
never-to-be-forgotten walk.

"We will go up and see the fire on the heath; I love the smell of dry
pine wood burning," said mother.

"I love to see the fire dancing and crackling," said Lottchen. "How
still everything is."

"It is the calm of twilight. The wind usually drops in the evening,"
said mother.

"Look, look, over there by those dark woods there is something moving,"
said Lotty. "I think it is a white cat."

"A white cat! How queer that she should have strayed so far; she does
not belong to the farm, I know."

"Hush! perhaps she is not a cat at all--then she will vanish." And lo
and behold when they looked again, there was no cat there, though they
had distinctly seen it a minute before on the field at the wood's edge.

"She is really a witch, I believe," said mother, with the curious
expression on her face that Lotty knew so well.

Going further up the hill, they saw a wonderful sight. Twenty or more
peasant girls were busy working, hacking the ground, their faces
illuminated by the wonderful sunset glow. They wore short full peasant
skirts edged with bright-coloured ribbons, and each had a gaily coloured
scarf pinned round the neck and bodice.

We learned afterwards that they were preparing the ground to plant young
fir-trees on a clearing. Germans are so careful of their woods, they
replant what has been cut down, so that they have a great wealth in wood
that we cannot boast of in England. I believe that they would _like_ to
cut off all the dead branches in order to make the woods quite tidy! But
this would be rather too big a job even for the German nation to
accomplish!

A man dressed in green with a feather in his cap, and a gun over his
shoulder stood by watching the girls at their work.

He was a forester and seemed to act as overseer. He gave the signal to
stop work as the strangers (mother and Lotty) approached. The women hid
their tools under the dry heather until the next day, and then strapped
on the big baskets they carried on their backs, without which they
hardly felt properly dressed. They then marched along together, singing
a melodious song in unison. As they came to the cross-roads they parted
company; some went this way, some that; all kept up the tune, which
echoed farther and farther, fainter and fainter in the distance.

Before long Lottchen and her mother were alone; but they felt that the
ground they stood on, was enchanted. Mother said it