"Have you a grater or a mortar?" inquired Lenore, laughing.
"I have neither of those machines," replied the forester.
"A hammer, then," suggested Fink, "and a clean sheet of paper."
The hammer was soon brought, but the paper was only found after a long search. Fink undertook to pound the chocolate, the forester brought fresh water from the spring, Lenore washed out some cups, and Fink hammered away with all his heart. "This is antediluvian paper," said he, "thick as parchment; it must have lain for some centuries in this magic hut." Lenore shook the chocolate powder into the saucepan, and stirred it. Then they all three sat down, and much enjoyed the result of their handiwork.
The golden sunbeams shone fuller into the room, lighting up the bright form of the beautiful girl, and the fine face of the man opposite her; then they fell upon the wall, and decked the head of the heron and the wings of the hawk. The raven came to the end of his soliloquy, and fluttered from his seat, hopping about the lady's feet, and croaking out again, "Lenore! Lenore!"
Lenore now conversed at her ease with the stranger, and the forester every now and then threw in a suitable remark. They spoke of the district and its inhabitants.
"Wherever I have met Poles in foreign lands, I have got on very well with them," said Fink. "I am sorry that these disturbances prevent one visiting them in their own homes; for, certainly, one best learns to know men from seeing them there."
"It must be delightful to see so many different scenes and people," cried Lenore.
"It is only at first that the difference strikes you. When one has observed them a while, one comes to the conclusion that they are every where much alike: a little diversity in the color of the skin and other details; but love and hate, laughter and tears, these the traveler finds every where, and every where these are the same. About twenty weeks ago I was half a hemisphere off, in the log hut of an American, on a barren prairie. It was just the same as here. We sat at a stout rustic table like this, and my host was as like this old gentleman as one egg is to another, and the light of the winter sun fell in just the same way through the small window. But if men have so little to distinguish them, women are still more alike in essentials. They only differ in one trifling particular."
"And what is that?" asked the forester.