“Can you answer a riddle?” asked John.

“Yes, as a child I used to be able to do that well.”

“Then tell me what this is—­it is a simple, plain word:  Take away the first letter, and you’re ready to tear your hair out; put it back again, and all is firm and sure?”

“That’s easy,” said Barefoot, “easy as anything; it’s Truth and Ruth.”

At the first inn by the gate they stopped off; and Amrei, when she and John were alone in the room, and the latter had ordered some good coffee, said: 

“How splendidly the world is arranged!  These people have provided a house, and tables, and benches, and chairs, and a kitchen, in which the fire is burning, and they have coffee, and milk and sugar, and fine dishes, and it is all ready for us as if we had ordered it.  And when we go farther on we find more people and more houses, with all we want in them.  It’s like it is in the fairy-tale, ‘Table, be covered!’”

“But you have to have the ‘Loaf, come out of the bag!’ too,” said John, and he reached into his pocket and drew forth a handful of money.  “Without that you’ll get nothing.”

“Yes, to be sure,” said Amrei; “whoever has those wheels can roll through the world.  But tell me, John—­did coffee ever taste to you in your whole life like this?  And the fresh white bread!  Only you have ordered too much; we cannot manage all this.  The bread I shall take with me, but it’s a pity about the good coffee.  How many poor people could be refreshed by it, and we must let it go to waste.  And yet you have to pay for it just the same.”

“That’s no matter; one cannot figure so accurately in the world.”

“Yes, yes, you are right.  You see, I have been accustomed to do with little.  You must not take it amiss if I say things of that kind—­I do it without thinking.”

Presently Amrei got up.  Her face was glowing, and when she stood before the glass, she exclaimed: 

“Gracious heavens!  How can it be?  All this seems almost impossible!”

“Well, there are still some hard planks to pierce; but I am not worrying about that.  Now lie down and rest for a short time while I look for a Bernese chaise-wagon—­you can’t ride on horseback with me in the daytime—­and we want one anyway.”

“I cannot sleep—­I have a letter to write to Haldenbrunn.  I am away from there now, and yet I enjoyed a great many good times there.  And I have other matters to settle, besides.”

“Very well, do that until I come back.”

John went out, and Amrei wrote a long letter to the Magistrate in Haldenbrunn, thanking the entire community for benefits received, and promising to adopt a child from the place some day, if it were possible; and she once more begged to have Black Marianne’s hymn-book placed under the good old woman’s head.  When she had finished, she sealed the letter and pressed her lips tight together with the remark: 

“So!  Now I have done my duty to the people of Haldenbrunn.”