Walpurga’s homecoming was not pleasure unalloyed.  She did not miss the luxuries to which she had become accustomed.  She rather relished the hard, manual labour, to which she applied herself with full energy.  But her baby was a stranger to her, cried when she wished to take her up, and became only gradually accustomed to her.  Her faculties had been sharpened, too; she felt a certain shyness in her husband, noticed his weaknesses, and was deeply hurt when, on the second evening after her return, he went to the inn, “so that people should not say he was under her thumb.”  Then, Hansei, coaxed by the shrewd innkeeper, had set his heart upon acquiring the inn, now that they had “wealth,” and upon thus becoming the most important man in the village.  But with much tact and cleverness Walpurga made him give up the plan, thereby arousing the innkeeper’s hostility, which became rampant when the reunited couple did not appear at a kind of fete which he gave, ostensibly in their honour, but really to benefit by the proceeds.  By this slight the esteem and admiration of the whole village were turned to ill-will and spite.

Hansei and Walpurga were almost boycotted; but their isolation made them draw closer together, work harder, and enjoy to the fullest the harmony of their domestic life.  Moreover, the freehold farmer, Grubersepp, who was a personage in the district, and had never before deigned to take much notice of Hansei, now called at the cottage and offered his advice on many questions.  When on a Sunday the village doctor and the priest were seen to visit the cottage, opinion began to veer around once more in the good people’s favour.

It was Walpurga’s old uncle Peter, a poor pitch-burner, who was known in the district as the “pitch-mannikin,” who brought the first news that the freehold farm, where Walpurga’s mother had in her young days served as a maid, was for sale at a very low price for ready money.  It was six hours from the lake, in the mountains—­splendid soil, fine forest, everything perfect.  Hansei decided to have a look at it, and Grubersepp went with him to value it.  The uncle’s description was found to be highly coloured; but after some bargaining the purchase was effected, and soon the news was bruited about the village that Hansei had paid “in clinking golden coin.”

The whole village, with a brass band, was assembled on the shore when Hansei and Walpurga, with their family and worldly possessions, embarked to cross the lake on the first stage of their “flitting.”  All vexations were forgotten in the hearty send-off, and as the boat glided across the silent lake it was followed by music, cheering, jodling, and the booming of mortars.

They approached the opposite shore and Hansei pointed out the figure of Uncle Peter waiting for them with the cart and the furniture, when Walpurga suddenly ceased rowing, and gave a startled cry.

“Heavens!  What’s that?  I could swear, when I was singing I thought if only my good Countess Irma could see us here together, how happy she would be.  And just now it seemed to me as though——­”