“I wander on, in God confiding,
    For all are His, wood, field, and fell;
  O’er earth and skies He, still presiding,
    For me will order all things well.”

As I was looking around, a fine traveling-carriage drove along very near me; it had probably been just behind me for some time without my perceiving it, so filled with melody had I been, for it was going quite slowly, and two elegant ladies had their heads out of the window, listening.  One was especially beautiful, and younger than the other, but both pleased me extremely.  When I stopped singing the elder ordered the coachman to stop his horses, and accosted me with great condescension:  “Aha, my merry lad, you know how to sing very pretty songs!” I, nothing loath, replied, “Please Your Grace, I know some far prettier.”  “And where are you going so early in the morning?” she asked.  I was ashamed to confess that I did not myself know, and so I said, boldly, “To Vienna.”  The two ladies then talked together in a strange tongue which I did not understand.  The younger shook her head several times, but the other only laughed, and finally called to me, “Jump up behind; we too are going to Vienna.”  Who more ready than I!  I made my best bow, and sprang up behind the carriage, the coachman cracked his whip, and away we bowled along the smooth road so swiftly that the wind whistled in my ears.

Behind me vanished my native village with its gardens and church-tower, before me appeared fresh villages, castles, and mountains, beneath me on either side the meadows in the tender green of spring flew past, and above me countless larks were soaring in the blue air.  I was ashamed to shout aloud, but I exulted inwardly, and shuffled about so on the foot-board behind the carriage that I well-nigh lost my fiddle from under my arm.  But when the sun rose higher in the sky, while heavy, white, noonday clouds gathered on the horizon, and the air hung sultry and still above the gently-waving grain, I could not but remember my village and my father, and our mill, and how cool and comfortable it was beside the shady mill-pool, and how far, far away from me it all was.  And the most curious sensation overcame me; I felt as if I must turn and run back; but I stuck my fiddle between my coat and my vest, settled myself on the foot-board, and went to sleep.

When I opened my eyes again, the carriage was standing beneath tall linden-trees, on the other side of which a broad flight of steps led between columns into a magnificent castle.  Through the trees beyond I saw the towers of Vienna.  The ladies, it appeared, had left the carriage, and the horses had been unharnessed.  I was startled to find myself alone, and I hurried into the castle.  As I did so I heard some one at a window above laughing.