She sprang up and bathed her face in cold water; then she opened her window and looked out into the courtyard. There sat Sabina under a pear tree, busy with her churn. All the feathered crowd of the place stood around, looking impatiently for the crumbs that she threw to them from time to time from a bowl upon the table by her side, while she improved the occasion to rebuke the arrogant and greedy, and to console the oppressed and down-trodden.
When she saw the young girl, she nodded kindly, and called up to her to say that every one in the lodge had been busy up there in the old castle since six o'clock. When Elizabeth reproached her for letting her sleep so long, she assured her that she had done so by the express desire of her mother, who thought that her daughter had overtasked her strength in the last few weeks of excitement and exertion.
Sabina's kind, placid face, and the fresh air of the morning soothed Elizabeth's nerves at once, and brought back her thoughts to the world of reality which was just now opening so brightly before her. She took herself seriously to task that, despite her uncle's fatherly admonition, she had leaned out of the open window until midnight upon the previous night, gazing across the moonlit meadow into the silent forest. But common sense often plays a poor part when opposed to excited fancy. Where it should conduct a rigid examination and discriminate wisely, it suddenly finds itself deserted in the judgment-seat, and must retire in confusion, while the varied and motley spectacle which fancy conjures up proceeds without interruption. Thus Elizabeth's self-reproaches soon vanished before the picture which presented itself to her memory, and still threw around her all the magic of a moonlit night in the forest.
As soon as she had dressed, and drank a tumbler of fresh milk, she hastened up to the castle. The sky was overcast, but only with those light, thin clouds which foretell a fresh although not a sunny, spring day. Therefore the birds' morning concert was of longer duration than usual, and the dew-drops lay as large and full in the cups of the flowers as if their existence for the day were not threatened.
As Elizabeth entered the large gate of the castle, which stood wide open, a huge green mound, piled up by the fountain, met her eye. It was formed of thistle stalks, ferns, and bramble bushes, which had been torn from their home in the garden, and were here bidding farewell to their long, merry life. The path through the arched gateway of the second court-yard to the grating was strewn with green boughs and leaves, as though a joyous marriage train had been passing through the old ruins; and even on the sill of a high window, that showed the remains of coloured glass in the lacework of the stone rosette of its pointed arch, some boughs had been caught as they were carried past, and the trailing end of a wild vine was coiling its living green lovingly around the stone trefoil of the Holy Trinity, which betrayed unmistakably that the dark, dreary hall within had once been the chapel of the castle.
The garden, where it had yesterday been impossible to take two steps, seemed to Elizabeth entirely changed. A considerable part of it had been cleared, and showed distinct traces of having been tastefully laid out. She could easily proceed along a partially cleared path, across which timid hares and squirrels ran fleetly now and then, until she reached the green rampart which had only been seen from a distance yesterday. At each end of the long, grassy embankment, broad, worn, stone steps led up to a low breastwork, over which one could look out into the forest, and there, where the trees were somewhat thin, through a green vista down into the valley, where the forest lodge, with the white doves dotting its blue-slated roof, was nestling cosily. At the foot of the embankment, just where the broad path terminated, was a little stone basin, into which a strong stream of crystal water flowed through the mouth of a mossy little marble gnome. Two lindens arched their boughs above this gurgling brook, and threw their grateful shade upon the tender forget-me-nots, which grew here in masses in the damp earth and wreathed the little basin with their heavenly blue.
Directly opposite the embankment lay her future habitation, which, with its window-shutters thrown back and the large door on the ground-floor wide open, looked so bright and hospitable to-day that Elizabeth welcomed with joy the thought that she was looking upon her home. Her gaze wandered over the garden, and she thought upon those moments of her childhood when, her little heart full of unconquerable longing, she had lingered behind her parents during some pleasant walk, and, with her face pressed close against the iron grating, had gazed into some strange garden. There she had seen happy children playing carelessly upon the greensward; they could bend down the lovely roses that hung in such clusters, and inhale their fragrance as long as they liked. And what a pleasure it must be to creep under the flower-laden boughs and sit there in the green, just like grown-up people in an arbour! But there was nothing for her then but the look and the longing. No one had ever opened the barred door to the child with the wistful eyes, who would have been only too happy if they would have thrust a few flowers through the grating into her little hands.
While Elizabeth was standing upon the embankment, the forester appeared at one of the upper windows of the dwelling. When he saw her graceful figure leaning against the low breastwork, as, with her beautiful head half turned towards the garden, she seemed sunk in a reverie, his features were illumined by an expression of pleasure and quiet delight.
And Elsie soon found him out, and nodding to him gaily, bounded down the steps towards the house. Little Ernst ran to her in the hall, and she took him up in her arms.
The assistance which the little boy had afforded had been, according to his own enthusiastic account, invaluable indeed. He had carried bricks for the mason who had been mending the hearth, had helped his mother to shake out the beds, and declared with pride that the lords and ladies upon the woollen hangings looked far handsomer since he had brushed off their dusty faces. He threw his arms around his sister's neck as she carried him up-stairs, assuring her all the way that he liked it a thousand times better here than in B——.