n had
already set. Barefoot said to herself, almost aloud:

"I wish tomorrow would never come, but that it would always be
today--always today!" And then she stood still, lost in dreams.

The night came on quickly. The moon, looking like a thin sickle, was
resting on the summits of the dark mountains. One little Bernese wagon
after another drove away. Barefoot went to find her master's chaise, to
which the horses were now being hitched. Then Rose came and told her
brother that she had promised some young people of her village to go
home in company with them. And it was understood as a matter of course
that the farmer could not drive home alone with the maid. And so the
little Bernese wagon went rattling off toward home with a single
occupant. Rose must have seen Barefoot, but she acted as if she were not
there. And so Barefoot once more wandered forth along the road on which
the stranger had departed. Whither could he have gone? How many hundred
villages and hamlets there were along that road, and to which one was
he bound? Barefoot found the place again where he had first accosted her
in the morning; she repeated aloud to herself his salutation, and the
answer she had given him. And once more she sat down behind the hazel
hedge, where in the morning she had slept and dreamt. A yellowhammer sat
on a slender spray, and its six notes sounded just as if it were saying:
"And why art thou still here? And why art thou still here?"

Barefoot had lived through a whole life's history in this one day. Could
it be but a single day? She went back again to the dance, but did not go
up to the room itself. And then she started out homeward alone. She had
gone almost halfway to Haldenbrunn, when she suddenly turned back; she
seemed unable to tear herself away from the place where she had been so
happy. And she said to herself that it was not right for her to go home
alone anyway; she should go in company with the young men and girls from
her village. When she arrived in front of the tavern at Endringen again,
she found several people from her village already assembled there.

"Ah, are you here, too, Barefoot?" was the only greeting she received.

And now there was great confusion; for many who had been the first to
urge going home, were still upstairs dancing. And now some strange lads
came and begged and besought them to stay for just one more dance; and
they got their way. Barefoot, too, went upstairs, but only to look on.
At las