ut there? Whom have you got over there among the willows?"

"You'll know all about it in a little while. Just take my word for it,
that mother and I are doing something that'll be a satisfaction to us
as long as we live. I am glad that God has given me a chance to do
something at this moment, when I would have liked to ask Him what I
could do to prove my gratitude. She's a dear, kind creature, and you'll
be satisfied."

Walpurga spoke so earnestly and impressively that Hansei replied:

"I'll drive on with the household goods, and, if it suits you, you can
follow in the covered wagon. Come as soon as you can. Uncle's here and
he'll drive."

Walpurga nodded to Hansei, who started up the mountain with the loaded
wagon. Then she went to a chest and took out a full suit. She carried
the clothes into the thicket, where she found Irma sitting beside the
mother, Inna's head resting against the breast of the old woman, who
had wound her arms around her.

"Irmgard will be quite happy with us; we know each other, already,"
said the mother.

No one on earth knows what Irma confessed to old Beate, down among the
willows by the lake. The old woman breathed thrice on her brow, as if
her warm breath could dispel the charm.

"And now put on your clothes," said Beate. In the thicket, Irma
exchanged her dress for the peasant's garb.

When she left the thicket and returned to the path, she kept her eyes
fixed on the ground. She was now entering upon a new world--a new life.

She looked at the beings and the objects in the parlor of the inn, as
if it were all a dream. She had come back to the world again from the
depths of the lake. Here, life was going on as usual; there was eating
and drinking, laughing and talking, singing, driving, riding--all this
she had already left far behind her. She was as one risen from the
dead. Silent, and with folded hands, she sat upon the bench, caring
nothing for the world about her, longing for only perfect solitude. And
yet her ear was so acute that she overheard the hostess whisper to
Walpurga: "A kinswoman, I suppose," and, significantly putting her
finger to her forehead, "she don't seem to be in her right wits."

"Maybe you're right," replied Walpurga. A smile, as of pain, passed
over Irma's beautiful lips: "There's one protecting disguise--and it is
madness."

She felt if a net of thorns had descended upon her head. Insanity may,
indeed, sometimes serve as an invisible cap, concealing, o