"I have it, Wistik! I can help you!" cried Johannes, clapping his hands. "I will ask Windekind."
Away he flew, over moss and dry leaves. Still, he stumbled now and then, and his step was heavy. Thick branches cracked under his feet where before not a grass-blade had bent.
There was the dense clump of ferns under which they had slept: how low it looked!
"Windekind!" he cried. But the sound of his own voice startled him.
"Windekind?" It sounded like a human voice! A frightened night-bird flew up with a scream.
There was no one under the ferns. Johannes could see nothing.
The blue lights had vanished. It was cold, and impenetrably dark all around him. Up above, he saw the black, spectral tree-tops against the starlight.
Once more he called. He dared not again. His voice seemed a profanation of the stillness, and Windekind's name a mocking sound.
Then poor little Johannes fell to the ground, and sobbed in contrite sorrow.
VII
The morning was cold and grey. The black, glimmering boughs, all stripped by the storm, were weeping in the mist. Little Johannes ran hurriedly on over the wet, down-beaten grass—staring before him toward the edge of the woods where it was lighter, as if that were the end in view. His eyes were red from crying, and strained with fear and misery. He had been running back and forth the whole night, looking for the light. It had always been safe and home-like with Windekind. Now, in every dark spot lurked the ghost of forlornness, and he dared not look around.
At last, he left the woods and saw before him a meadow over which a fine, drizzling rain was falling. A horse stood in the middle of it near a leafless willow-tree, motionless and with drooping head, while the water dripped slowly from its shining sides, and out of its matted mane.
Johannes walked along by the woods. He looked with tired, anxious eyes toward the lonely horse and the grey, misty rain, and he whimpered softly.
"All is over now," he thought. "The sun will never come out again. After this it will always be with me as it is now—here."
But he dared not stand still in his despair; something more frightful yet would happen, he thought.
Then he saw the grand enclosure of a country-seat, and, under a linden tree with bright yellow foliage, a little cottage.
He went within the enclosure, and walked through broad avenues where the ground was thickly covered with layers of brown and yellow linden leaves. Purple asters grew along the grass-plots, and other brilliant autumn flowers were flaming there.
Then he came to a pond. Beside it stood a large house with low windows and glass doors. Rose-bushes and ivy grew against the wall. It was all shut up, and wore a gloomy look. Chestnut-trees, half stripped of their foliage, stood all around; and, amid their fallen leaves, Johannes saw the shining brown chestnuts.
Then that chill, deathly feeling passed away. He thought of his own home. There, too, were chestnut-trees, and at this season he always went to find the glossy nuts. Suddenly he began to feel a longing—as though he had heard the call of a familiar voice. He sat down upon a bench near the house, and gave vent to his feelings in tears.
A peculiar odor caused him to look up. A man stood near him with a white apron on, and a pipe in his mouth. About his waist were strips of linden bark for binding up the flowers. Johannes knew this scent so well; it made him think of his own garden, and of the gardener, who brought him pretty caterpillars, and showed him starlings' eggs.
He was not alarmed, although it was a human being who stood beside him. He told the man that he had been deserted and was lost, and he gratefully followed him to the small dwelling under the yellow-leaved linden-tree.
Indoors sat the gardener's wife, knitting black stockings. Over the peat fire in the fireplace hung a big kettle of boiling water. On the mat by the fire lay a cat with folded forepaws—just as Simon sat when Johannes left home.
Johannes was given a seat by the fire that he might dry his feet. "Tick, tack!—Tick, tack!" said the big, hanging clock. Johannes looked at the steam which rose, hissing, from the kettle, and to the little tongues of flame that skipped nimbly and whimsically over the peat.
"Now I am among human beings," thought he.
It was not bad. He felt calm and contented. They were good and kind, and asked what he would like best to do.
"I would like best to stay here," he replied.
Here he was at peace, but if he went home, sorrow and tears would follow. He would be obliged to maintain silence, and they would tell him that he had been naughty. He would have to see all the past over again, and think once more of everything.
He did long for his little room, for his father, for Presto—but he would rather endure the silent longing where he was, than the painful, racking return. It seemed as if here he might be thinking of Windekind, while at home he could not.
Windekind had surely gone away now—far away to the sunny land where the palms were bending over the blue seas. He would do penance here, and wait for him.
And so he implored the two good people to let him stay. He would be obedient and work for them. He would help care for the garden and the flowers, but only for this winter;—for he hoped in his heart that Windekind would return in the spring.
The gardener and his wife thought that Johannes had run away because he was not treated well at home. They sympathized with him, and promised to let him stay.
He remained, and helped them in the garden and among the flowers. He was given a little bedroom, with a blue wooden bedstead. From it, mornings, he could see the wet, yellow linden leaves slipping along the window-panes; and nights, the dark boughs rocking to and fro—with the stars playing hide-and-seek behind them. He gave names to the stars, and called the brightest Windekind.
He told his history to the flowers—almost all of which he had known at home; the big, serious asters, the gaudy zinias, and the white chrysanthemums which continued to bloom so late in the rude autumn. When all the other flowers were dead the chrysanthemums still stood—and even after the first snowfall, when Johannes came one morning early to look at them, they lifted their cheerful faces and said: "Yes, we are still here. You didn't think we would be, did you?" They were very brave, but two days later they were all dead.
But the palms and tree-ferns still flourished in the green-house, and the strange flower-clusters of the orchids hung in their humid, sultry air. Johannes gazed with wonder into the splendid cups, and thought of Windekind. On going out-of-doors, how cold and colorless everything looked—the black footsteps in the damp snow, and the rattling, dripping skeletons of trees!
Hour after hour, while the snowflakes were silently falling until the branches bowed beneath their weight of down, Johannes walked eagerly on in the violet dusk of the snow-shadowed woods. It was silence, but not death. And it was almost more beautiful than summer verdure; the interlocking of the pure white branches against the clear blue sky, or the descending clouds of glittering flakes when a heavily laden shrub let slide its snowy burden.
Once, on such a walk, when he had gone so far that nothing was to be seen save snow, and snow-covered branches—half white, half black—and all sound and life seemed smothered under its glistening covering, he thought he saw a tiny white animal run nimbly out in front of him. He followed it. It bore no likeness to any that he knew. Then he tried to grasp it, but it sped away and disappeared in a tree-trunk. Johannes peered into the round, black opening, and thought—"Could it be Wistik?"
He did not think much about him. It seemed mean to do so, and he did not wish to weaken in his doing of penance. And life with the