Howbeit I had no time for much thought; the sleigh was already at the door, and or ever I was aware the old man had me in his arms and kissed my lips and brow, and called me his dear and well-beloved daughter.  Then the younger man pressed forward to assert his claims, and when he bent over me I threw my arms round his neck, and he lifted me up, for all that I was none of the lightest in my winter furs and thick raiment, out of the sleigh like a child, and again his lips were on mine.  But we might not suffer them to meet for more than a brief kiss.  Uncle Conrad had discovered my aunt’s face among all her wrappings, and gave loud utterance to his well-founded horror, while my aunt cried out to her long-lost son by name again and again, with all the love of a longing and long-robbed mother’s heart.

I gladly set my lover free, and at the next minute he was on his knees in the snow and his trembling hands removed wrap after wrap from the beloved head, Kubbeling helping him from the driving-seat with his great hands, purpled by the cold.

And again in a few minutes the mother was covering her only son’s head with tender kisses, so violently and so long that her strength failed her and she fell back on the pillows, overdone.

Hereupon Gotz bowed over her, and as he had erewhile lifted his sweetheart out of the sleigh, so now he lifted his mother; and while he held her thus in his arms and bore her into the house, not heeding the kerchiefs which dropped off by degrees and lay in a long line covering the ground behind her, as coals do which are carried in a broken scuttle, she cried in a trembling voice:  “Oh you bad, only boy, you my darling and heart-breaker, you noble, wicked, perverse fellow!  Gotz my son, my own and my All!”

And when she had found a place in the warm room, in the head forester’s wife’s arm-chair by the fire, I removed her needless raiment and Gotz sank down at her feet, and she took his head in her hands, and cried: 

“I did not wait for you to come, but flew to meet you, my lad, by reason that, as you know—­I took a sinful oath never to bid you to come home.  But oath and vow are nought; they are null and void!  I have learned from the depths of my heart that Heaven had nought to do with them—­that it was pure pride and folly; and I bid you home with my whole heart and soul, and beseech your forgiveness for all the sorrow we have brought upon each other, and I will have and keep you henceforth, and nought else here on earth!  Ah, and Gertrude, poor maid!  She would have been heartily, entirely welcome to me as at this day, were it not that there is another maiden who is dearest to my heart of all the damsels on earth!”

Then was there heartfelt embracing and kissing on both parts, and, as I saw her weep, I made an unspoken vow that if the eyes of this mother and her son should ever shed tears again I would be the last to cause them, and that I would ever be ready and at hand to dry them carefully away.