r of her sullen, awkward
husband. Her temperament was suggestive of life among the mountains;
for there, when it is dull and rainy, everything is covered with
darkness, but, as soon as the sun breaks forth, every object is lighted
up afresh--the green meadows are brighter, the lake acquires a darker
blue, very mountain height and every forest stream is revealed anew in
clear and perfect lines. Like a beautiful flower, opening and revealing
all its beauty in the glowing sunshine, Walpurga was always better and
brighter in fair weather. Hansei remained steady and, indeed, gained in
firmness while the bad weather lasted. When the storm raged, swaying
branches and boughs to and fro, he resisted, as it were, and maintained
his ground. He had something in common with the rough-barked,
weather-beaten oak. The monarch of the forest does not don its robes of
green with the first mild rays of the spring sun. Its boughs remain
bare long after its neighbors are decked with foliage, but, in the end,
it surpasses them all in strength and beauty.

The past year had indeed wrought a greater change in Hansei than in
Walpurga.

The tree growing on a rock, drawing scanty nourishment from the thin
crust of earth around it, and exposed to wind and storm, will, when
transplanted to a rich soil, seem to languish at first; but it will
soon shoot forth with new strength. Thus had it been with Hansei. The
sudden transition, from a life of care and toil into a new sphere, had
almost ruined him. But in a little while, all was well with him again.
And now his firmness and self-possession stood him in good stead, for
he was obliged to prevent Walpurga's kind but strongly self-conscious
nature from gaining ascendency over his.

Walpurga was, at first, almost vexed at her husband's insensibility.
She would go about in an angry mood, would curl her lips and clench her
fists. She felt as if she must do something to punish the villagers.
Hansei remained calm; it was not his habit to trouble his head with
much thinking. It gradually dawned upon Walpurga's mind that Hansei was
far stronger than she. Like a plant deprived of sunshine, and in spite
of her happy home, she would have withered and languished because of
the averted glances of her neighbors. She was so possessed by her anger
that she was only sensible to that which, feeding it, provoked her the
more. Hansei was quite calm, and Walpurga, for the first time, became
fully aware of his strength of