The cold, dead feeling about his heart disappeared. He thought of his own home—there two chestnut-trees grew, and at this season he always went out to pick up chestnuts. He suddenly longed to be there, as though an inviting voice had called him. He sat down on a bench close to the big house and cried himself to rest.
A peculiar smell made him look up. A man was standing by him, with a white apron on and a pipe in his mouth. Round his waist he had a wisp of bast with which he tied up the flowers. Johannes knew that smell so well! It reminded him of his own garden, and the gardener who brought him pretty caterpillars and showed him starling's eggs.
He was not frightened,—though it was a man who stood before him. He told the man that he had got lost and did not know his way, and thankfully followed him to the little cottage under the lime-tree.
Indoors, the gardener's wife sat knitting black stockings. A large kettle of water was hung to boil over the turf-fire in the hearth-place. On the mat by the fire lay a cat with her forepaws crossed, just as Simon had been lying when Johannes left home.
Johannes was made to sit down by the fire to dry his feet. 'Tick-tick, tick-tick,' said the great hanging clock. Johannes looked at the steam which came singing out of the kettle, and at the little flames which skipped and jumped fantastically about the peat blocks.
'Here I am among men,' thought he.
It was not alarming. He felt easy and safe. They were kind and friendly, and asked him what he would like to do.
'I would rather stay here,' he replied.
Here he was at peace, and if he went home there would be scolding and tears. He would have to listen in silence, and he would be told that he had been very naughty. He would be obliged to look back on the past, and think everything over once more.
He longed, to be sure, for his little room, for his father, for Presto—but he could better endure the quiet longing for them here than the painful, miserable meeting. And he felt as though here he could still think of Windekind, while at home he could not. Windekind was now certainly quite gone. Gone far away to the sunny land where palm-trees bend over the blue sea. He would do penance here and await his friend's return.