ell-bound by the overpowering silence of the hour.

Billy sat there, and on her too was the burden of this motionlessness
which was so soothing, this delicious intoxication of light, of silence,
and of all the hot odors which the leaves, the pine-needles, and the
great sun-basking mushrooms exhaled. She too stared into space, feeling
how her eyes also grew as glassy bright as the eyes of yonder fox, and
how everything in her merely existed to drink in the sunlit stillness.
Now the cry of the jay rang out excitedly, as if he would waken some
one whether or no. The fox was gone, and Billy also started up; then
she leaned back, lifted her arms, stretched herself, and screwed up her
face as if to cry. Something very beautiful was over. Painfully she got
up: what was the use, she must go on in any case.

A wide forest road, covered with short grass, led her through a young
fir-nursery, and when the road took a turn, a bit of heath lay before
Billy, in the midst of which stood some cottages, standing there with
their golden-brown timbers and silver-gray roofs like tiny, gleaming
caskets on the red-blooming heath. Over there a cow was lowing in
long-drawn, sleepy tones; a cock crowed; smoke rose straight from the
chimney into the sky. Billy stopped short; all this moved her so
powerfully, she did not know why; her eyes grew moist, and yet she
could not but smile. She went straight toward the house; a low lattice
fence inclosed a garden which Billy entered through the half open gate.
Long beds of vegetables, gooseberry bushes. Here and there blue
flowering chicory and dark red poppies laid flaming spots of color on
the uniform brightness of the midday light. Beehives stood around
everywhere. Before one of these a man was kneeling, busied with the
bees. Billy went up to him; doubtless he heard the gravel crunch under
her feet, and he raised his head: a small old face, looking as if it
had been compressed in an upward direction, gazed at Billy calmly out
of dull, very light blue eyes.

"Good morning," said Billy.

"Good morning," answered the man, holding his hands out cautiously
before him, for they were thickly covered with bees as with
golden-yellow velvet gloves. As Billy said nothing, he turned to his
hive again.

"Am I far from Kadullen?" Billy began again.

"Three hours' walk," answered the man without looking up.

Again both were silent. The strong scent of the potherbs in the
garden-beds, the sourish smell of the