.

The young gipsy was beginning to yield to sleep when cries in the
distance roused her into an impulse to fly.

Hark! She knows the voices! They are those of Bremer, Fritz, and all the
people of the farm searching for her!

Then, without a moment's hesitation, Myrtle flew, light as a roe, farther
into the forest, stopping only at long intervals to listen attentively
and anxiously.

The cries died away in the distance, and soon the only sound she could
hear was the loud beating of her own heart, and she went on her way at a
less rapid pace.

Very late, when the moon's rays became less brilliant, unable to stand
out against her fatigue any longer, she sank down on the heath and fell
fast asleep.

She was four leagues from Dosenheim, near the source of the Zinzel.
Bremer was not likely to come so far to look for her.

CHAPTER II.

It was broad daylight when Myrtle awoke amidst the deep solitudes of the
Schlossberg, beneath an old fir-tree overgrown with moss and lichen. A
thrush was whistling overhead; another was answering in the distance far
down the valley. The morning breeze was fanning the rustling foliage; but
the air, already warm, was loaded with the sweet perfumes of the
ground-ivy, the honeysuckle, the woodruff, and the sweetbriars.

The young gipsy opened her eyes with astonishment remembering, with
surprise and delight, that the voice of Catherine would no more trouble
her, calling, "Myrtle! Myrtle! where are you, you idle child?" she
smiled, and listened to what gave her pleasure, the note of the thrush
singing among the trees.

Near at hand a spring was bubbling out of a cleft; the girl had but to
look round to see the living stream running, sparkling and clear, amidst
the long grass. From the rock high overhead hung an arbutus loaded with
its gorgeous freight of scarlet berries.

Though Myrtle was thirsty she felt too idle to move amongst all this
beauty and all this harmony, and she dropped her pretty brown face,
smiling and admiring the daylight through her long dark lashes.

"This is how I am always going to be," she said. "How can I help it? I am
an idle girl. I was made so."

Dreaming in this lazy way, the picture rose up in her mind of the
farm-yard with the proud cock strutting among his hens, and then she
remembered the eggs, how they used to find them in the straw in some
corner of the barn.

"If I had a couple of hard-boiled eggs," she thought, "just like those
Fritz ha