Years fled. The little girl had grown to womanhood and become the Braut of an honest but poor youth.
Then she recalled the wonder-flower and entreating voice, and thought to herself she had missed her good fortune through her disobedience.
This she related to her lover one day as they wandered through the wood around the ruins.
And he strove to comfort her, and thought they were enough in each other, and would be able to support themselves without aid from the world of enchantment; but in his mind he thought she might have gathered the flower, for tales were still told of great treasures guarded by the maiden of the Lauenburg, and he had himself already seen much of the wonder-world, and the influence of higher powers over human destiny.
Was he not a Sunday child?[[1]]
[[1]] In the Harz it is said all children born on Sunday are always fortunate.
He was present as the owner of the estate Winatahusen in Thale, had removed the wonder-stone, on which the good fortune of the estate hangs, and had seen how sixteen horses and hundreds of men had only with difficulty moved it; while the heavens had grown dark, and the storm threatened to destroy the buildings, and only misfortune followed misfortune, till the stone was restored to the ancient convent estate.
He had also learned the power of enchantment possessed by the dwellers of the caves in the Bodethal.
A dwarf of one cave had often brought him a bundle of healing herbs for his sick mother, and he knew that he always laid healing plants ready for those who had entreated his help.
But the angry cobold, who in the form of a green bottle-fly dwelt in another cave, had once nearly thrown him headlong from the rocks as he gathered plants, and he only saved himself by making the sign of the cross three times.