rce greeted each other
as they passed.

It was true, the great plains were covered with cattle, but to Fritz's
eyes the prospect had something mournful and sad. It was so still and
silent. The cows had no bells beneath their necks like those in the
Alpine regions; nor did the herds jodeln to each other, as the Tyrolers
do, from cliff to cliff, making the valleys ring to the merry sound.
No, it was as still as midnight; not even a bird was there to cheer the
solitude with his song.

If the aspect without had little to enliven Fritz's spirits, within
doors it had even less. The Bauer was very poor; his hut stood on a
little knoll outside the village, and on the edge of a long tract of
unreclaimed land, which once had borne forest-trees, but now was covered
by a low scrub, with here and there some huge trunk, too hard to split,
or too rotten for firewood. The hut had two rooms; but even that was
enough, for there was nobody to dwell in it but the Bauer, his wife, and
a little daughter, Gretchen, or, as they called her in the Dorf,
"Grettl'a." She was a year younger than Fritz, and a good-tempered
little "Maedle;" and who, but for over-hard work for one so young, might
have been even handsome. Her eyes were large and full, and her hair
bright-coloured, and her skin clear; yet scanty food and continual
exposure to the air, herding the goats, had given her a look of being
much older than she really was, and imparted to her features that
expression of premature cunning which poverty so invariably stamps upon
childhood. It was a happy day for Grettl'a that brought Fritz to the
cottage; not only because she gained a companion and a playfellow, but
that she needed no longer to herd the goats on the wild, bleak plain,
rising often ere day broke, and never returning till late in the
evening. Fritz would do all this now; and more, he would bring in the
firewood from the little dark wood-house, where she feared to venture
after nightfall; and he would draw water from the great deep well, so
deep that it seemed to penetrate to the very centre of the earth. He
would run errands, too, into the Dorf; and beetle the flax betimes;--in
fact, there was no saying what he would not do. Fritz did not disappoint
any of these sanguine expectations of his usefulness; nay, he exceeded
them all, shewing himself daily more devoted to the interests of his
humble protectors. It was never too early for him to rise from his bed--
never too late to sit