CHAPTER XIV.
"'The first day's celebration of our Mission festival was at an end. It was then not early, but still on until late in the night the sounds of the songs of praise and thankfulness were to be heard in the houses, from the parsonage out to the furthest outlying houses of the peasants, and so it was also in the surrounding villages; for the parish village could by no means accommodate all the guests who had come to the festival, albeit not only the chambers and dwelling-rooms, but also the haylofts were made lodging-places for the sleepers. And that was a blessed evening, when so many brethren and sisters from far and near could refresh themselves with one another's company and pour out their hearts together. I thank God that so many pastors and teachers were come, too, and also our faithful superintendent was not wanting. It is right that the heads of the Church should not be missing at such a festival.
"'The next day—and we had prayed the Lord to give us good weather for it—we were to go to a place in the midst of the lonely heath, called Tiefenthal."'
"What does that mean?" Maggie interrupted.
"Tief means deep. Thal means valley."
"'Deep valley,'" said Maggie. "But I do not understand what a heath is."
"Naturally. We do not have them in this country, that ever I heard of," said Meredith.
"Neither here nor in England," said Mr. Murray. "For miles and miles the Lüneburger heath is an ocean of purple bloom; that is, in the time when the heather is in blossom. But there are woods also in places, and in other places lovely valleys break the spread of the purple heather, where grass and trees and running water make lovely pictures. Sometimes one comes to a hill covered with trees; and here and there you find solitary houses and bits of farms, but scattered apart from each other, so that great tracts of the heath are perfectly lonely and still. You see nothing and hear nothing living, except perhaps some lapwings in the air, and a lizard now and then, and humming beetles, and maybe here and there some frogs where there happens to be a wet place, and perhaps a landrail; elsewhere a general, soft, confused humming and buzzing of creatures that you cannot see, and the purple waves of heather, only interrupted here and there by a group of firs or a growth of bushes along the edge of a ditch."