Oh, the constant care and trouble which the little flax-plant occasions!  In August it had been cut and hung to dry in small bundles on stakes.  It had thus been left out several weeks.  Then in September it had been carried to the barn and the seed beaten out like corn and stowed away, the empty little husks being given to the hens and the voracious pig.  The stalks—­hairs, as Anton called them—­were again carried to the field, and spread this time on the ground, neither too thick nor too thin, so that sun and moon could shine through them, and alternate rain and sun could rot them.  The sooner the stalks decay and the fibres are loosened, the sooner the “hairs” can be carried to the kiln.  This busy time had now come.

In many places an oblong-shaped brick pit, half under ground, but often at the top, is used.  The people of Edelsheim, however, stuck by preference to a deserted stone hut belonging to the parish, which, standing alone, could not, when used as a kiln, set fire to other houses.  The night between Sunday and Monday was the time appointed for the Hof flax to be dried; so Moidel, Anton and the two Nannis—­the grossdirn and the kleindirn in household parlance—­carried it down to the hut, where old Traudl, a village crone and the parochial “hair-dryer,” had already made the vast oven red hot with a load of wood.  Moidel and the servant-girls acting as the flax-dressers, the grummelfuhr spread the flax on planks in the furnace-like room, and returned home with cheerful steps.  Through the dead hours of the night a silent watcher sat at the closed hut door.  It was no other than Moro:  he had, as usual, attended Moidel to the spot and noticed the proceedings.  This she remembered clearly afterward, when in the morning, returning to her labors, he greeted her half reproachfully yet full of affection, as much as to say he had been quietly rectifying any short-comings on her part.  All that day, whilst the industrious grummelfuhr hackled and received good cheer in the form of krapfen, for hackling is hard work, Moro attended in the character of a kind but strict overseer.  Let us hope that when the fairies sat spinning in the stube in the twilight between last Christmas and Epiphany they amply rewarded Moro with an unlimited supply of magic bones, for did he not to the best of his ability help to make the flax “white as chalk, soft as silk and long as the ship’s sail”?

A mild excitement reigned in the Hof about the return of the cattle, and it was confided to us that Jakob greatly hoped that we should still be at Edelsheim to witness the triumphal entry.  The bitter cold and rain, however, whilst it made it a necessity for us to leave, impeded the downward journey from the Eder Olm, which was still further retarded by Zottel, the new queen, not taking as cleverly to her dignity as Jakob had in the first instance fondly imagined.