was often too quiet for him, and
he was often too head-strong for her, but for all that they stuck to
one another. They spent nearly all their leisure hours together: in
winter in their mothers' tiny rooms, during the summer in wood and
field.

Once when Elisabeth was scolded by the teacher in Reinhard's hearing,
he angrily banged his slate upon the table in order to turn upon
himself the master's wrath. This failed to attract attention.

But Reinhard paid no further attention to the geography lessons, and
instead he composed a long poem, in which he compared himself to a
young eagle, the schoolmaster to a grey crow, and Elisabeth to a white
dove; the eagle vowed vengeance on the grey crow, as soon as his wings
had grown.

Tears stood in the young poet's eyes: he felt very proud of himself.
When he reached home he contrived to get hold of a little
parchment-bound volume with a lot of blank pages in it; and on the first
pages he elaborately wrote out his first poem.

Soon after this he went to another school. Here he made many new
friendships among boys of his own age, but this did not interrupt his
comings and goings with Elisabeth. Of the stories which he had
formerly told her over and over again he now began to write down the
ones which she had liked best, and in doing so the fancy often took
him to weave in something of his own thoughts; yet, for some reason he
could not understand, he could never manage it.

So he wrote them down exactly as he had heard them himself. Then he
handed them over to Elisabeth, who kept them carefully in a drawer of
her writing-desk, and now and again of an evening when he was present
it afforded him agreeable satisfaction to hear her reading aloud to
her mother these little tales out of the notebooks in which he had
written them.

Seven years had gone by. Reinhard was to leave the town in order to
proceed to his higher education. Elisabeth could not bring herself to
think that there would now be a time to be passed entirely without
Reinhard. She was delighted when he told her one day that he would
continue to write out stories for her as before; he would send them to
her in the letters to his mother, and then she would have to write
back to him and tell him how she liked them.

The day of departure was approaching, but ere it came a good deal more
poetry found its way into the parchment-bound volume. This was the one
secret he kept from Elisabeth, although she herself had inspi