“Helb! Helb!” she called. “Helb bring. Mein Gott in himmel, helb!”
No answer came from the silent camp.
“Ees it for dis, den, I haf to you come?” she cried, addressing the circle of mountains shimmering in opalescent light. Far down from the valley below came the long clear note of a bugle, probably of some coaching party. An impudent woodpecker seated on a limb above her commenced an insistent, aggravating tapping.
Alberdina made another struggle to loose her bonds and then settled back weeping. At last merciful sleep brought her oblivion. The mountains shimmered in the heat waves. The sunlight slanting through the trees cast flickering golden shadows on the carpet of pine needles. The tinkle of a cowbell broke the stillness. In her dreams the Swiss girl was reminded of her own cherished uplands, where in the festive cheese-making time she had gathered with other maids and youths and danced to the music of the zither. Zither, did she say? But, had she been dreaming then, all the while? Was not that a zither now mingling its fairy music with the notes of the cow bell? Alberdina opened her eyes.
“Helb! Helb! I asg you helb!” she called.
The music stopped instantly and a man, tall, slender, with an indescribably distinguished air, approached, carrying the zither under his arm.
“You called?” he asked courteously.
Alberdina burst into a torrent of excited German. She rolled her prominent eyes to indicate her bonds. Streams of tears flowed down her cheeks, or taking a short cut, ran over the bridge of her nose and dropped down a precipice to her heaving bosom. Phoebe’s father watched her with an expression of gentle bewilderment. He seemed to be trying to recall something an infinite distance away, like one of those inexplicable reminiscences that flash through our minds and are gone before we can grasp their significance.
“It’s useless,” he said, shaking his head. “But something has happened to you? Oh, yes, you have been tied up.”
Taking a bone-handled clasp knife from his pocket, he carefully cut the ropes wound about her. Alberdina bounded out of the chair like a big, fleshy catapult.