The mist hung over the valley like a veil of clouds, and the sun 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 last 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!”