Otherwise the swallows had a free course. Up and down they darted in their arrowy flight, now grazing the earth, now rising in graceful curves, anon flying in a straight line and then zigzag, chirping, twittering, and fluttering their long wings unweariedly.
For them, too, it was probably the last evening, and to-morrow they would fly towards the South, and not return till spring.
Gotthold thought of this, and then of the evening when he had walked through the deserted village-street, and the swallows' song brought tears of sorrow to his eyes, and how empty his home and the whole beautiful world had been to him, and how the whole beautiful world now seemed to him like home; and as he gazed into the dark eyes of his beloved wife, and pressed the little warm hand of the child, now his, he knew "what the swallow sang."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1]: Dumpling.
[Footnote 2]: The second person singular is used throughout this conversation, but I have thought it better to adopt the English mode of address.--Tr.