Hediger looked very critically at the whole scene and his greeting was rather stern; but Hermine was so charming and at the same time so resolute that he sat there as if muzzled and ended by going himself to get a "glass of wine" out of the cellar and even drawing it from the small keg. Hermine responded to this mark of favor by declaring that she must have a plate of mice kept for Karl, as he probably didn't get very good things to eat in the barracks. She took her plate and pulled out the finest mice by their tails with her own dainty fingers and kept on piling them up till at last Karl's mother herself cried that it was enough. Hermine then put the plate beside her, looked at it with satisfaction from time to time, and occasionally picked out a piece and ate it, saying that she was Karl's guest now; after which she would conscientiously replace the plunder from the dish.
Finally it got to be too much for the worthy Hediger; he scratched his head and, urgent though his work was, hastily put on his coat and hurried forth to seek the father of the little sinner.
"We must look out," he said to him; "your daughter and my old woman are sitting at home in all their glory, hand in glove, and it all looks mighty suspicious to me; you know women are the very devil."
"Why don't you chase the young scallywag off?" said Frymann, annoyed.
"I chase her off? Not I; she's a regular witch! Just come along yourself and attend to her."
"Good, I'll come along with you and make the girl thoroughly understand how she's to behave."
When they got there, however, instead of Miss Hermine they found Karl, the sharpshooter, who had unbuttoned his green waistcoat and was enjoying his mice and what wine there was left all the more because his mother had just happened to mention that Hermine was going rowing on the lake again that evening as it would be bright moonlight and she hadn't been on the lake for a month.
Karl started out on the lake all the earlier because he had to be back in barracks at the sound of "taps," blown in heavenly harmonies by the Zurich buglers on beautiful spring and summer evenings. It was not yet quite dark when he reached the lumber yard; but alas, Master Frymann's skiff was not floating in the water as usual; it lay bottom up, on two blocks, about ten yards from the shore.
Was that a hoax, or a trick of the old man's, he wondered and, disappointed and angry, he was just about to row off when the great, golden moon rose out of the woods on Mt. Zurich and at the same time Hermine stepped out from behind a blossoming willow that hung full of yellow cattails.
"I didn't know that our boat was being freshly painted," she whispered, "so I'll have to come into yours, row fast!" And she sprang lightly in, and sat down at the other end of the skiff which was scarcely seven feet long. They rowed out till they were beyond the range of any spying eye and Karl began at once to call Hermine to account as regarded Ruckstuhl, telling her of the latter's words and acts.