reement: nothing here for lazybones to eat."

But in the end he was prevailed on to relent; the banquet proceeded,
and a thrush in a juniper bush provided the music.

So the day passed. But Reinhard had, after all, found something, and
though it was not strawberries yet it was something that had grown in
the wood. When he got home this is what he wrote in his old
parchment-bound volume:

Out on the hill-side yonder
The wind to rest is laid;
Under the drooping branches
There sits the little maid.

She sits among the wild thyme,
She sits in the fragrant air;
The blue flies hum around her,
Bright wings flash everywhere.

And through the silent woodland
She peers with watchful eyen,
While on her hazel ringlets
Sparkles the glad sunshine.

And far, far off the cuckoo
Laughs out his song.
I ween Hers are the bright, the golden
Eyes of the woodland queen.

So she was not only his little sweetheart, but was also the expression
of all that was lovely and wonderful in his opening life.

* * * * *

BY THE ROADSIDE THE CHILD STOOD

The time is Christmas Eve. Before the close of the afternoon Reinhard
and some other students were sitting together at an old oak table in the
Ratskeller.[2]

[2] The basement of the Rathaus or Town Hall. This, in almost every
German town of importance, has become a restaurant and place of
refreshment.

The lamps on the wall were lighted, for down here in the basement it was
already growing dark; but there was only a thin sprinkling of customers
present, and the waiters were leaning idly up against the pillars let
into the walls.

In a corner of the vaulted room sat a fiddler and a fine-featured
gipsy-girl with a zither; their instruments lay in their laps, and
they seemed to be looking about them with an air of indifference.

A champagne cork popped off at the table occupied by the students.
"Drink, my gipsy darling!" cried a young man of aristocratic
appearance, holding out to the girl a glass full of wine.

"I don't care about it," she said, without altering her position.

"Well, then, give us a song," cried the young nobleman, and threw a
silver coin into her lap. The girl slowly ran her fingers through her
black hair while the fiddler whispered in her ear. But she threw back
her head, and rested her chin on her zither.

"For him," she said, "I'