"Dead!" cried Walpurga, "Do you know more than I do? Did Franz tell you anything in secret?"
"Franz told me nothing but what you've heard."
"But why do you talk about death in that way?"
"Because one who's very sick can easily die. But do be calm."
"Yes, yes; I hardly know that we are in the woods, and I feel as if I couldn't see a thing. Stop a moment! There's a doctor up there. He knows her, and others who know her will come, too. The man who came to see us the other day is her brother, and now they'll go and take our Irmgard away with them."
"If she's in her right mind, and wants to go of her own free will, we can't say anything against it," said Hansei, "but this I do say, and no one will move me from it. As long as she's so sick that she can't say what she wants, I won't let them do a thing to her. I'm Hansei, and I'm her protector; nothing shall happen to her--All I ask of you, is to stand by me and not interfere. You know when I say a thing, I mean it."
"Yes, yes, you're right!" said Walpurga. Hansei's resolute words seemed to infuse her with new strength, for she went up the steep mountain path without the slightest difficulty. It almost seemed as if Hansei had been carrying her as well as the child. Moved by this thought, she suddenly said:
"Do you remember when you once wanted to carry me, at home by the lake? Oh, dear me, it seems as if we must have been very different beings then, for we knew nothing at all of the world."
"We're none the worse off, for knowing and having some of it!" replied Hansei, in a loud voice, and awakening the child. "There, now; run along again," said he to Burgei.
They rested for a little while. Hansei remembered the piece of bread that he had put in his pocket and, cutting off a bit of it, he said while pointing toward the valley with his knife: "Our brook runs down through there, and it's only an hour's distance from here to the little town where Stasi lives."