only ones by a long way. What girl in the village did he not love, if
it came to that: Liesel, who worked so hard and lived so poorly,
bullied by her cross-grained granddam. Susanna, plain and a little
crotchety, who had never had a sweetheart to coax the thin lips into
smiles. The little ones--for so they seemed to long, lanky Ulrich,
with their pleasant ways--Ulrich smiled as he thought of them--how
should a man love one more than another?

The Herr Pfarrer shook his head and sighed.

"That is not love. Gott in Himmel! think what it would lead to? The
good God never would have arranged things so. You love one; she is
the only woman in the world for you."

"But you, yourself, Herr Pastor, you have twice been married,"
suggested the puzzled wheelwright.

"But one at a time, Ulrich--one at a time. That is a very different
thing."

Why should it not come to him, alone among men? Surely it was a
beautiful thing, this love; a thing worthy of a man, without which a
man was but a useless devourer of food, cumbering the earth.

So Ulrich pondered, pausing from his work one drowsy summer's
afternoon, listening to the low song of the waters. How well he knew
the winding Muhlde's merry voice. He had worked beside it, played
beside it all his life. Often he would sit and talk to it as to an
old friend, reading answers in its changing tones.