This, then, was the master, evidently the common messenger of all, who, whilst the guests called him behind his back “Headless Seppl,” had managed to fulfill two dozen verbal commissions to everybody’s satisfaction.  This was the landlord, whom we had pictured lying in a drunken lethargy in some hay barn after the bout of the night before.  How we had maligned an evidently simple, honest soul, who had been toiling from early morning, and who, having discharged the orders of his different customers, started up the steep mountain-side, and we heard him calling “Koos, koos, koos,” lovingly to his cows!  It was only when he had milked them, patted them, called each by its name, seen them comfortably housed for the night, that he had time to think of resting or eating his dumplings for supper.

It was the fourth morning of our stay, and we were preparing to leave.  Seppl’s basket was already packed with our belongings, and he, the good beast of burden, had orders in half an hour to act as our guide, when suddenly Moidel flew out of the kitchen, exclaiming, “He is coming! he is coming!” and wiping her arms on her apron rushed down the green meadows beyond the chapel.  Fraeulein Magdalena, dropping her work, uttered a joyful cry.  “Yes, it is he! it’s Herr Pflersch!” she said, turning to us.  “The king of Bad Scharst.  Ah! why don’t you stay, for glorious days will begin?  I’ve been here eleven years at the same time as Herr Pflersch, and we have none of us gone to bed for seven days together.  We play at cards and he tells us tales.”

The excitement in the whole establishment became universal.  Herr Pflersch was our grocer, a burly, good-natured man, who bowed politely to us when he arrived at the house, led by a troop of admiring and rejoicing friends.  He was attended by his cook, and had brought with him a sackful of provisions and his feather bed, which came toiling up the hill in a cart.

Fraeulein Magdalena stood rapturously before the welcome guest, offering him a quart glass of water:  “No beer to offer you, Herr Pflersch, but glorious water, Herr Pflersch.”

Moidel apologized for not going a step of the way with us, “But Herr Pflersch had come;” and whilst she said so she began putting one of Herr Pflersch’s own wax candles into a brass candlestick.  “I have, however, a favor to ask of you,” she continued:  “that is, if we ever happen to meet on the high-road in the Pusterthal, you’ll allow me to recognize you.”  A humble request indeed, poor soul!

Gertraud came down from the barn to say good-bye to us.  The “little maid” was still lingering, but she added mysteriously, “She’ll be knocking thrice at her mother’s door to-morrow.”

Walking across the meadows, this time taking a different way from that by which we had arrived, we met several groups of peasant-men carrying bundles in their hands, who asked Seppl if the Herr had arrived, and being answered in the affirmative, they hurried on, as if desirous to act as Knights of the Round Table to King Pflersch.