When the cows started homeward it must have been five or six o'clock, and we had been in the forest the whole day long. Oh, how hungry, how awfully hungry I was! And Karl was as pale as a little white flower. Never—even if I live to be ninety years old—never shall I forget that summer day on the big moss-grown rock with Kaspar's bull down below.
Well, then I did something unspeakably stupid. Instead of going the way the cows had taken (which of course led right to Kaspar's farm), Karl and I went exactly the opposite way, farther into the forest. Ugh! how could any one be such a stupid donkey! I'm disgusted whenever I think of it.
Karl and I walked on and on for an eternity it seemed. It grew darker and darker and the air was full of mysterious sounds, low murmurs and rustlings; my heart thumped frightfully. Just think, if we had to stay in the forest all night when it was pitch dark! Suppose we never found our way out to people again——
Oh, that big, big forest!
I did not cry once, I didn't dare to, you see, for Karl's sake. I just stared and listened, and the forest murmured softly—softly, the whole time.
Once in a while we sat down and then Karl would weep bitterly with his head in my lap, poor little fellow!
"Now we'll soon get to Goodfields, Karlie boy, and Mother will be so glad to see us—oh, so glad! Won't it be jolly?"
"Yes—and then I'm going to have a hundred pieces of bread and butter."
Suddenly we stumbled against a fence! And as suddenly my weariness vanished. Where there was a fence, there must be people. We jumped over the fence. Beyond it was a little cleared space where stood—yes—really—a tiny hut. Then—wasn't it queer? I was so glad that I began to cry violently as I dashed towards the house.
It was so very dark that I could not distinguish anything clearly, but I could see that there was some one sitting on the door-stone. And just imagine! When we drew nearer, I saw that it was Crazy Helen, an old half-witted woman who went about among the farms begging. Many a time through the summer had she been at Goodfields, and she had told us that she lived all alone in the forest, high, high up on the mountain.