CHAPTER IX.
"Hallo, Elsie, do not run so!" shouted the forester, the next day at three o'clock in the afternoon, as he came out of the forest with his rifle on his shoulder and crossed the meadow towards the Lodge.
Elizabeth was running down the mountain, her round hat hanging upon her arm instead of resting upon the braids that glanced in the sunlight, and as she reached the house she flew laughing into her uncle's arms, which he extended to receive her.
She put her hand into her pocket, and stepped back a few paces. "Guess what I have in my pocket, uncle," she said, smiling.
"Well, what can it be? No need to puzzle one's brains long about it. Probably a little sentimental hay,—a few dried flowers, kept for the sake of the melancholy associations that they recall,—or some printed sighs over the woes of the world, bound in gilt pasteboard?"
"Wrong, indeed; twice wrong, Herr Forester, for, in the first place, your wit glances harmlessly aside from me, and in the next—look here!"
She drew a little box from her pocket, and lifted the cover. There, upon green leaves, was comfortably lying a large lemon-coloured caterpillar, with black spots, broad bluish-green stripes upon its back, and a crooked horn upon its tail.
"By all that is wonderful, Sphinx Atropos!" cried the delighted forester. "Ah, my sunbeam, where did you find that exquisite specimen?"
"Over at Lindhof, in a potato-field. Isn't it beautiful? There, let us shut the box carefully, and put it back in my pocket."
"What! am I not to have it?"