d.

There was a peculiar twitching in his face. And now, as he walked along,
his shoulders seemed to Amrei to be shaking up and down; he was
evidently laughing. Amrei looked at her companion's face and saw the
roguery in it. Suddenly she recognized in the withered features the face
of the man to whom she had given a jug of water, years ago, on the
Holderwasen. Snapping her fingers softly, she said to herself:

"Stop! Now I know!" And then she added aloud: "It's wrong of you to
speak in that way of the Farmer to a stranger like me, whom you don't
know, and who might be a relative of his. And I'm sure it is not true
what you say. They do say, to be sure, that the Farmer is tight; but
when you come right down to it, I dare say he has an honest heart, and
simply doesn't like to make an outcry about it when he does a good deed.
And a man who has such good children as his are said to be, must be a
good man himself. And perhaps he likes to make himself out bad before
the world, simply because he doesn't care what others think of him; and
I don't think the worse of him for that."

"You have not left your tongue behind you. Where do you come from?"

"Not from this neighborhood--from the Black Forest."

"What's the name of the place?"

"Haldenbrunn."

"Oh! Have you come all the way from there on foot?"

"No, somebody let me ride with him. He's the son of the Farmer yonder--a
good, honest man."

"Ah, at his age I should have let you ride with me too!"

They had now come to the farm, and the old man went with Amrei into the
room and cried:

"Mother, where are you?"

The wife came out of another room, and Amrei's hands trembled; she would
gladly have fallen upon her neck--but she could not--she dared not.

Then the Farmer, bursting into laughter, said:

"Just think, dame! Here's a girl from Haldenbrunn, and she has something
to say to Farmer Landfried and his wife, but she won't tell me what it
is. Now do you tell her what my name is."

"Why, that's the Farmer himself," said the woman; and she welcomed the
old man home by taking his hat from his head and hanging it up on a peg
over the stove.

"Do you see now?" said the old man to Amrei, triumphantly. "Now say what
you like."

"Won't you sit down," said the mother, pointing to a chair.

Amrei drew a deep breath and began:

"You may believe me when I say that no child could have thought more
about you than I have done, long ago, long before these last days. Do