Catherine stepped to the door. It was a most beautiful spring morning. Small white clouds passed quietly over the light blue sky. Golden stars danced in the creek. Dew-drops sparkled in the luxuriant grass of the meadow--here in emerald green, in blue and purple shades there. The woods which encircled the hill on which the house stood looked down quietly. Over a rocky height that projected steep out of the forest there hovered a great eagle with extended wings sporting in the balmy air that was breathing through the valley and whose every puff was charged with balsamic aroma.
Catherine folded her hands and her eyes filled with tears. It seemed to her as if she were again standing in the small church of her home village, and that she heard her father's mild voice pronounce the benediction over the congregation: "The Lord let the light of His countenance fall upon you and give you peace."
The last remains of unrest had passed away from her and, in her present mood, she went to seek Lambert, whom she supposed to be at the buildings which, as she passed around the block-house, she saw standing at some distance towards the forest.
She found him working at a hedge which inclosed part of a field in which the lance-shaped, bright leaves of the Indian-corn waved in the morning wind. Young, red-blossomed apple trees, whose trunks had been carefully wound with thorns, had been planted around the fields.
"This the deer did last night," said Lambert, as he approached a damaged place. "Here are the fresh tracks. Conrad knows how to keep them respectful, but during the eight days that he has been away they have again become bold."
"I will help you," said Catherine, after she had looked on for a few minutes.
"This is no labor for you," said Lambert, looking up.
"So, once for all, you must not speak," serenely replied Catherine. "If you want a princess in your house you must at once send me away again. I own myself unfit for that."
Lambert smiled with pleasure when he saw how skillfully she took hold of the matter, and how handy she was. He now noticed for the first time that the roses had again blossomed on her cheeks; and as she now, in helping him, bent over and back, the agreeable play of the lines of her slender, girlish body filled him with trembling delight.
"But you also should not be unemployed," said Catherine.