in a heap, and with his face hidden in his hands. He moved not till I
spoke to him; then he dried his wet eyes with his fur hood, and when I
laid my hand on his shoulder he drew a deep breath, and said:

"It has been a moving morning, Mistress Margery. But it will all come
right. It has come upon me as a sharp blow to be sure; and I have no
longer any business here in the forest, all the more so by reason that I
have children and grandchildren at home who have looked over-long for the
old man's home-coming. I will set forth to-morrow early. To tell the
truth to none but you, I cannot endure to be away from the old place a
longer space than it takes to go to Alexandria and back. My old heart
is grown over-soft and weary for an absence of two journeys. And yet
another matter for your ear alone: You will be the wife of a noblehearted
man, but mind you, he has long been free to wander whithersoever he
would. Take it to heart that you make his home dear and happy, else it
will be with you as it is with my old woman, who hath never mastered that
matter, and who lives alone for more days in the year than ever we
dreamed the morning we were wed."

Hereupon we went forth together; and I took his counsel to heart, and
Gotz never left me for any long space of time, save when he must.

As for Kubbeling, he kept his word and departed from us on the morrow
morning; yet we often saw him again after that time, and the finest
falcon in our mews is that he sent us as a wedding gift; and after our
marriage Ann received a fine colored parrot as a gift from old Uhlwurm,
and the old man had made it speak for her in such wise that it could say
right plainly: "Uhlwurm is Ann's humble servant."

We now spent two days at the forest lodge in bliss, as though paradise