"And though your guilders should keep me free,
Yet I cannot do your will;
Far, far o'er the hills and away I must go,
Sweet sweetheart, then think of me still.
"Far over the hills and away when I came,
Sweet sweetheart, she open'd the door;
She laugh'd not, she spoke not, she welcomed me not:
It seem'd that she knew me no more.
"There's never an apple so white and so red
But the kernels are black at its core;
There's never a maid in all Wurtemberg
But plays false when you watch her no more."
Pop! went the report of a fowling-piece. The girls started: the finch flew away from the cherry-tree. Looking round, they saw the gamekeeper of Muehringen run into a field of rape-seed, with his dog before him. He picked up a heron, pulled out one of its feathers and fixed it in his hat, thrust the bird into his pouch, and hung his gun upon his shoulder again: he was a fine-looking fellow as he strode through the green field.
Tony said, "He might have let the bird alone on Sunday."
"Yes," said Babbett; "the gamekeepers are no good Christians anyhow: they can do nothing but get poor folks into the workhouse for trespassing, and kill poor innocent beasts and birds. That green devil's imp there sent poor Blase's Kitty to prison for four weeks just the other day. I wouldn't marry a gamekeeper if he were to promise me I don't know what."
"Old Ursula once told me," said Bridget, the youngest of the three, "that a gamekeeper is bound to kill a living thing every day of his life."
"That he can do easy enough," laughed Babbett, catching a gnat which had settled on her arm.
By this time the gamekeeper came quite near them. As if by a previous arrangement, they all began to sing again: they wished to pretend that they did not see the gamekeeper, but in their constraint they could not raise their voices, and only hummed the last verse of the song: -
"If she plays me false I will play her fair:
Three feathers upon my hat I wear;
And, as she will not have me stay,
I'll travel forth upon my way."
"Girls, how are you?" said the gamekeeper, standing still: "why don't you sing louder?"
The girls began to giggle, and held their aprons to their mouths. Babbett found her tongue first, and said, "Thank you, mister, we are only singing for ourselves, and so we hear it if we sing ever so low: we don't sing for other people."
"Whisht!" said the gamekeeper: "the little tongue cuts like a sickle."
"Sickle or straight, it's as broad as it's long; whoever don't like it may talk to suit himself if he can," replied Babbett. Tony jogged her, saying, half aloud, "You're as rough as a hedgehog, you Babbett."
"Oh, I can stand a joke as well as the next one," said the gamekeeper, making the best of a bad job.
For all that, the girls were a good deal embarrassed, and did just the worst thing to put an end to it: they rose and took each others' arms to go home.
"May I go with you, ladies?" said the gamekeeper again.
"It's a high road and a wide road," said Babbett.
The gamekeeper thought of getting away, but reflected that it would look ridiculous to let these girls bluff him off. He felt that he ought to pay Babbett in her own coin, but he could not: Tony, by whose side he walked, had "smitten" him so hard that he forgot all the jokes he ever knew, although he was not a bashful man by any means. So he left the saucy girl in the enjoyment of her fun and walked on in silence.
Just to mend matters a little, Tony asked, "Where are you going on Sunday?"
"To Horb," said the gamekeeper; "and if the ladies would go with me I wouldn't mind standing treat for a pint or two of the best."
"We're going home," said Tony, blushing up to the eyes.
"We'd rather drink Adam's ale," said Babbett: "we get that for nothing too."
At the first house of the village, Babbett again said, pointing to a footpath, "Mr. Gamekeeper, there's a short cut for you goes round behind the village: that's the nearest way to Horb."
The gamekeeper's patience was running out, and he had a wicked jibe on his lips; but, checking, himself, he only said, "I like to look an honest village and honest people in the face." He could not refrain from turning his back on Babbett as he spoke.
The gamekeeper grew uncivil because he could not crack a joke, – a thing that happens frequently.
As they were entering the village, the gamekeeper asked Tony what her name was. Before she could answer, Babbett interposed, "Like her father's."
And when the gamekeeper retorted upon Babbett, "Why, you are mighty sharp to-day: how old are you?" he received the common answer, "As old as my little finger."
Tony said, half aloud, "My name's Tony. What makes you ask?"
"Because I want to know."
'When they had reached the top of the hill, at "Sour-Water Bat's" house, the three girls stood still and laid their heads together. Suddenly, like frightened pigeons, they ran in different directions, and left the gamekeeper all alone on the road. He whistled to his dog, who had started in pursuit, put his left arm in his gun-strap, and went on his way.
At the stone-quarry the girls met again and stood still.
"You are too rough, you are," said Tony to Babbett.
"Yes, you are so," Bridget chimed in.
"He didn't hurt you," continued Tony, "and you went at him like a bull-dog."
"I didn't hurt him either," answered Babbett; "I only fooled him. Why didn't the jackanapes answer me? And, another thing, I don't like the green-coat, anyhow. What does he mean by running through the whole village with us and making people think we want something of him? And what will Sepper6 and Caspar think of it? I'm not such a good-natured little puss as you are; I don't take things from counts or barons, nor barons' gamekeepers either."
Here the conversation was interrupted by the appearance of Sepper and Caspar, who had looked for their sweethearts at the cherry-bush in vain. Babbett now told the whole story so glibly that no one else could get a word in edgewise. As a good many smart things occurred to her while she was speaking, she put them into her own mouth, without being unnecessarily precise. People have a way of embellishing the recital of their own doings and sayings in this manner: it requires so much less readiness and courage to invent these things when the person at whom they are levelled is gone than when he is by.
Sepper expressed his hearty approval of Babbett's proceedings, and said, "These gentry-folk must be stumped short the minute you begin with them."
The gamekeeper certainly did not belong to the "gentry-folk;" but it was convenient to class him so, for the purpose of scolding the more freely about him.
Sepper gave an arm to Tony, his sweetheart, while Bridget hung herself upon the other. Caspar and Barbara walked beside them; and so they passed out through the hollow to take a walk.
Sepper and Tony were a splendid pair, both tall and slender, and both doubly handsome when seen together: among a thousand you would have picked them out and said, "These two belong together." Sepper wore a style of dress half-way between that of a peasant and a soldier: the short flapping jacket set off in fine contrast the display of well-rounded limbs cased in the close-fitting military breeches. He looked like an officer in undress, so fine was the blending of ease and precision in all his movements.
At the top of the hill they saw the gamekeeper in conversation with the woodranger of Nordstetten. Sepper even observed that he was pointing toward them, and cleared his throat as if to prepare a sharp answer for the "gentleman," who was still two hundred yards away. Then he put his