He turned over to go to sleep again; but he could not get the gold key out of his head. Before now, when reading the big Book, he had thought of that, and he saw plainly that it could not be the right Book.
[VIII]
'Now he will come back,' thought Johannes, the first time the snow had melted here and there, and the snowdrops peeped out in bunches. 'Will he come now?' he asked of the snowdrops. But they did not know, and stood there with hanging heads, looking down at the earth as if they were ashamed of their haste to come out, and would gladly creep back again.
If only they could have done so! The numbing east wind soon began to blow again, and the snow drifted deep over the foolish, forward little things. Some weeks later came the violets; their sweet smell betrayed them among the brushwood; and when the sun had shone warmly on the mossy ground the pale primroses came out by hundreds and thousands.
The shy violets with their fine fragrance were the mysterious harbingers of coming splendour, but the glad primroses were the glorious reality. The waking earth had caught and captured the first sunbeams and turned them into a golden jewel.
'Now—now he will certainly come!' thought Johannes. He eagerly watched the leaf-buds on the trees as they slowly swelled day by day and freed themselves from the bark, till the first pale-green tips peeped out between the brown scales. Johannes would stand gazing for long at the little young leaves—he could never see them move, but if he only turned round, they seemed to have grown bigger. 'They dare not, so long as I am looking at them,' thought he.
The shade had already begun to be green. Still Windekind did not come, no dove had settled near him, no little mouse had spoken to him. When he spoke to the flowers they merely nodded and never answered.
'My punishment is not yet ended,' thought he.
One sunny spring morning he went to the pond by the great house. The windows were all wide open. Had the people who lived there come back?