wing in a slow, protracted way as if in idle
protest against such hot weather.

Fritz had begun by plaiting the strands of his whip, but he soon lay down
in the long grass with his hat over his eyes, and Friedland came to lie
near him, gaping from ear to ear.

Myrtle alone suffered no inconvenience from the overwhelming heat;
sitting on the ground near the fire, with her arms wreathed around her
knees, full in the sun, her large dark eyes slowly surveyed the dark
arches formed by the branches of the forest.

Time passed on slowly. The distant village clock had struck twelve, then
one, and two, and the young gipsy never stirred. In the woods and jagged
mountain-tops, the crags, the forests, descending into the valleys, she
heard some mysterious call. They spoke to her in a language not unknown
to her.

"Yes," she said to herself, "yes; I have seen all that before--long
ago--a long time ago."

Then with a quick, sharp glance at Fritz, who was in a deep sleep, she
rose to her feet and began to fly. Her light footsteps scarcely bent the
grass beneath her; she ran on and on, up the hill; Friedland turned his
head round with a careless glance, then stretched out once more his
languid limbs, and composed himself to sleep.

Myrtle disappeared in the midst of the brambles which border the common
wood. At one bound she cleared the muddy ditch where a single frog was
croaking amongst the rushes, and twenty minutes after she reached the top
of the Roche Creuse, whence you may have a wide prospect of Alsace and
the blue summits of the Vosges.

Then she turned to see if anybody was following her. She could still
distinguish Fritz asleep in the green meadow with his hat over his eyes,
and Friedland and the sleeping cattle under their tree.

Farther on she could see the village, the river, the roof of the
farm-house, with its flights of pigeons eddying round; the long, crooked
street and red-petticoated women walking leisurely up and down; the
little ivy-covered church where the good _cure_ Niclausse had baptised
her into the Christian faith and afterwards confirmed her.

And when she had sufficiently contemplated these objects, turning her
face the other way towards the mountain, she was filled with delight to
mark how the densely-crowded firs covered the hill-sides, up to their
highest ridge, close as the grass of the fields.

At the sight of all this grandeur the young gipsy felt her heart beating
and expanding with unkn