Every year after harvest-time Fritz and Myrtle spent whole days far away
from the farm, pasturing the cattle, singing, and whistling, and baking
potatoes under the ashes, and coming down the rocky hill in the evening
blowing the shepherd's horn.

These were some of Myrtle's happiest days. Seated before the burning
hemp-stalks, with her pretty brown face between her hands, she lost
herself in endless reveries.

The long strings of wild ducks and geese which traverse, about the end of
autumn, the boundless heavens spread from the mountains on the east to
the western hills, seemed to have a depressing effect upon her mind. She
used to follow them with longing eyes, straining them as if to overtake
the wild birds in the immeasurable distance; and suddenly she would rise,
spread out her arms, and cry--

"I must go! I must go! I can't stay!"

Then she would weep with her head bowed down, and Fritz, seeing her in
tears, would cry too, asking--

"Why do you cry, Myrtle? Has anybody hurt you? Is it any of the boys in
the village?--Kasper, Wilhelm, Heinrich? Only tell me, and I will knock
him down at once! Do tell!"

"No; it is not that."

"Well, why are you crying?"

"I don't know."