let you
tell me! I should know what I wanted."

Ruth looked at him enquiringly, but he cried laughingly: "I shan't tell.
But what would you ask?"

"I? I should ask to have my mother able to speak again like other
people. But you would wish...."

"You can't know what I would wish."

"Yes, yes. You would bring your mother back home again."

"No, I wasn't thinking of that," replied Ulrich, flushing scarlet and
fixing his eyes on the ground.

"What, then? Tell me; I won't repeat it."

"I should like to be one of the count's squires, and always ride with
him when he goes hunting."

"Oh!" cried Ruth. "That would be the very thing, if I were a boy like
you. A squire! But if the word can do everything, it will make you lord
of the castle and a powerful count. You can have real velvet clothes,
with gay slashes, and a silk bed."

"And I'll ride the black stallion, and the forest, with all its stags
and deer, will belong to me; as to the people down in the village, I'll
show them!"

Raising his clenched fist and his eyes in menace as he uttered the
words, he saw that heavy rain-drops were beginning to fall, and a
thunder-shower was rising.

Hastily and skilfully loading himself with several bundles of faggots,
he laid some on the little girl's shoulders, and went down with her
towards the valley, paying no heed to the pouring rain, thunder or
lightning; but Ruth trembled in every limb.

At the edge of the narrow pass leading to the city they stood still.
The moisture was trickling down its steep sides and had gathered into a
reddish torrent on the rocky bottom.

"Come!" cried Ulrich, stepping on to the edge of the ravine, where
stones and sand, loosened by the wet, were now rattling down.

"I'm afraid," answered the little girl trembling. "There's another flash
of lightning! Oh! dear, oh, dear! how it blazes!--oh! oh! that clap of
thunder!"

She stooped as if the lightning had struck her, covered her face with
her little hands, and fell on her knees, the bundle of faggots slipping
to the ground. Filled with terror, she murmured as if she could command
the mighty word: "Oh, Word, Word, get me home!"

Ulrich stamped impatiently, glanced at her with mingled anger and
contempt, and muttering reproaches, threw her bundle and his own into
the ravine, then roughly seized her hand and dragged her to the edge of
the cliff.

Half-walking, half-slipping, with many an unkind word, though he was
always careful to suppor