t the cry was: "Whoever dances now shall be left behind;" and
after a great deal of difficulty and much rushing to and fro, the
Haldenbrunn contingent was finally assembled in front of the house. Some
of the musicians escorted them through the village, and many a sleepy
father came to the window to see what was going on, while now and then a
woman, who had once been one of the merry-makers herself, but who had
married and so culminated her days of frivolity, would appear at a
window and cry: "A pleasant journey home!"

The night was dark, and large pine fagots had been provided for torches;
and the lads who carried them danced about and shouted with joy.
Scarcely had the musicians gone back, and scarcely had the party left
Endringen well behind, when the cry was: "Put out the torches! They only
dazzle us!" And two soldiers in particular, who were then off duty and
had joined the party, made fun of the torches, in proud consciousness of
their sabres. Accordingly the torches were extinguished in a ditch. And
now they began to miss this or that boy, and this or that girl, and when
their comrades called out to them, they would answer from a distance.

Barefoot walked behind the rest, a good distance from those of her own
village. They let her alone, and that was the greatest kindness they
could have done her; she was with the people of her own village, and yet
she was alone. She often looked around at the fields and the woods; how
wonderful it all looked in the night!--so strange and yet so familiar!
The whole world seemed as strange to her as she had become to herself.
And as she went along, step by step, as if she were being pulled or
pushed, without realizing that she was moving, so did her thoughts move,
involuntarily, in her mind; they seemed to be whirling on, and she could
not grasp or control them--she did not know what it meant. Her cheeks
glowed as if every star in the heavens were a heat-radiating sun, and
her very heart burned within her.

And now, just as if she had begun it, as if she herself had struck up
the tune, her companions ahead began to sing the song that had risen to
her lips that morning:

"There were two lovers in Allgau,
Who loved each other so dear;

And the young lad went away to war;
When comest thou home again?

Ah, that I cannot, love, tell thee,
What year, or what day, or what hour!"

And then the "Good Night" song was sung; and Amrei,
in the distance, joined in:

"A