Yet she likewise failed to find the vanished wanderer, and the weeks and months grew to be years while we waited in vain.  It was on the twenty-second day of March in the second twelve month after Herdegen’s departing that the treasures of the realm, and among them a nail from the Cross and the point of the spear wherewith they pierced the Lord’s side, were to be brought into the town in a solemn procession, and I, with many others, rode forth to meet it.  They were brought hither from Blindenberg on the Danube, and the Emperor sent them in token of his grace, that we might hold them in safe keeping within our strong walls.  They had been brought thus far right privily, under the feint that the waggon wherein they were carried bore wine vats, and a great throng gathered with shouts of joy to hail these precious things.  Prisoners were set free in honor of their coming; and for my own part I mind the day full well, by reason that I put off my black mourning weed and went forth in a colored holiday garb for the first time in a long while.

If I had, in truth, been able by good courage to shake off in due time the oppressing weight of my grief, I owed it in no small measure to the forest-whither we went forth, now as heretofore, to sojourn in the spring and autumn seasons—­and to its magic healing.  How many a time have I rested under its well-known trees and silently looked back on the past.  And, when I mind me of those days, I often ask myself whether the real glad times themselves or those hours of calmer joy in remembrance were indeed the better.

As I sat in the woods, thinking and dreaming, there was plenty for the eye to see and the ear to hear.  The clouds flew across in silence, and the soft green at my feet, with all that grew on tree and bush, in the grass, and by the brink of the pool, made up a peaceful world, innocently fair and full of precious charm.  Here there was nought to remind me of the stir of mankind, with its haste and noise and fighting and craving, and that was a delight; nor did the woodland sounds.—­The song of birds, the hum of chafers and bees, the whisper of leaves, and all the rush and rustle of the forest were its mother-tongue.

Yet, not so!  There was in truth one human soul of whom I was ever minded while thinking and dreaming in these woods through whom I had first known the joy of loving, and that was the youth whose home was here, for whose return my aunt longed day and night, whose favorite songs I was ever bidden to sing to my uncle when he would take the oars in his strong old hands of an evening, and row us on the pool-he who peradventure had long since followed my lover, and was dead in some far-off land.

Ann, who was ever diligent, took less pleasure in idle dreaming; she would ever carry a book or some broidery in her hand.  Or she would abide alone with my aunt; and whereas my aunt now held her to be her fellow in sorrow, and might talk with her of the woe of thinking of the dearest on earth as far away and half lost, they grew closer to each other, and there was bitter grief when our duty took us back to the town once more.  At home likewise Herdegen was ever in our minds, nevertheless the sunshine was as bright and the children’s faces as dear as heretofore, and we could go about the tasks of the hour with fresh spirit.