"I never knew--my mother said I was guilty of it all. It was because I had come into the world that things went so hardly with him--oh!--and how could I help it!" she hid her head in her hands and wept bitterly.
Donatus drew her hands away and took them consolingly in his own. "My child, my dear child!"
"That is just what my father always used to say when he came to see us and took me in his arms. You know he never could stay with us; he was obliged to go into the towns and sing to people for his daily bread. And when he did come it was by stealth, and only when we were at Finstermünz, or the valleys of the Inn or the Lech, where no one from these parts was likely to see him. He used to bring us as much food and money as he could spare, and would stay a few weeks with us in the forest. There he taught me a number of little proverbs and sayings and pretty tunes, and the arts of rhyming as far as I could learn them, but I was still quite young when he died--I could not count more than twelve trees that I had marked."
"How did he die?" asked her companion.
The child's hand trembled as she answered.
"They fell upon him like a wild deer--some people out hunting who recognised him--and he dragged himself to us almost bleeding to death. We nursed him as best we could, but it was too late to be of any use. Oh! and he was so patient and gentle even when he was dying; he laid his hand upon my head and blessed me, and said, 'May God never visit the guilt of your parents on your head--expiate in faithfulness their sin against faithfulness.'"
Donatus took her hand solemnly in his. "Yes, you will be faithful and expiate the guilt of your parents whatever their sin was--a strange divination tells me this, and my soul is possessed with a deep sadness for your sake. What dark secret hangs over your birth, poor child--Who may you be? Did you never ask your mother Berntrudis?"
"No--why should I? What good could it do me? I am a poor, useless creature, I come and pass away like a wild heath-flower, no one asking whence came you or why do you bloom?"
"Poor heath-flower--lonely and sweet, how sacred you are to me. The perfume refreshes the weary pilgrim, and the dreaming spirit, like the dainty bee, gathers golden honey from the blossom of your lips. You grow firmly rooted in the dry rock, and humbly bend your head to the wind as it sweeps over the desert spot--and yet you stand firm and live on through sunshine and rain, through the fury of wind and weather! Oh! heath-flower--I will not ask whence you came--I only rest my weary head in your shade and bless you!" And he threw himself on his knees before her, and bent his brow on her hands. Thus he rested for some time in silence; not a breath, not a sound roused him from his dreams.
In such a moment of exquisite rapture the girl almost held her breath--feeling herself like a holy vessel into whom the Lord was pouring out his mercies.