It was not many days before the town of Edelsheim awoke to the fact that the war was not over, and that though the French emperor was a prisoner, France seemed determined to fight to the bitter end.  
The gay flags which had been hung out of the windows so joyfully were now rolled up again and put aside, and the people went about their work with dejected faces, awaiting the dread tidings that their loved ones were ordered to march forward towards Paris, and fight the enemy there.
 
But Violet knew nothing of all this. Secure in the certainty of her father's speedy return, she sat daily in the window watching. She very seldom spoke now; it seemed to tire her. But she smiled to herself much oftener than she had hitherto done, and waved her little thin hand to Fritz, who was ever on the watch in the house opposite; and [Pg 240]constantly, in the warm autumn evenings, when the windows of both houses were open, he called across to her and told her his news. Violet smiled and nodded her head, but she had no strength to call back again, nor even to draw up the cord of the little basket into which Fritz was constantly dropping little gifts and scraps of paper, on which were printed in large letters messages of love and comfort:—"Fritz will soon be well enough to see Violet"—"Fritz is making a boat for Violet;" and once or twice, in a very closely-folded message, were the words, "Fritz is always asking God to make Violet well."
 
But at last there came a message from Fritz which roused her for a time out of her lethargy, and set her heart beating wildly.
 
It was a beautiful autumn evening; the town was rosy red in the sunset, and all the casements of the oriel window lay wide open. Violet, who had not spoken for several hours, was lying back on her pillows half sleeping, half waking, with her eyes dreamily fixed on the hill, which was wrapped in a soft purple mist. The canary bird was picking out the loose feathers from its wings in the cage overhead; and the old jackdaw on the opposite side of the street, for a wonder was at rest, with his head tucked under his wing.
 
[Pg 241]
 
Fritz for a long time had been making signals to Violet from the high-up dormer window of the house; but her face had been turned away, and though her eyes were fixed on the far-off hill, she saw nothing but a waving meadow bright with flowers, over whose green fragrant grass she was passing with a delicious freedom, her feet not actually touching the ground, only here and there skimming over the cool meadow grass, while a refreshing air wafted her along without fatigue and without pain.
 
She often had this fancy now, that she was floating along over the earth, that she was free from the ache in her back and the weary heaviness of her limbs; and this afternoon she was listening again to that voice from the meadow saying, "I am going to lay this poor tired lamb in its mother's bosom."
 
But all at once, when she was seeking once more to see the face of the child which the Lord Jesus held so lovingly in his arms, the basket-bell rang with a sharp tinkle overhead, and she awoke from her dream to find herself no longer wandering amid green pastures, but propped up among her pillows, oh so tired, and with a sudden tearful longing to lay her head against some loving heart and be at rest.
 
At the sound of the bell, Evelina, who had been dozing also in a chair near the stove, started up[Pg 242] angrily, and going over to the window, looked down into the street.
 
"Ha! it is just as I thought, thou little donkey. Hast thou no sense, Master Fritz, but to go and ring bells in people's ears when they are asleep? See, now, thou hast startled Violet out of her dreams, and she will be ill all the night."
 
"No, no," said Violet eagerly; but there were sudden tears of distress and weakness standing in her uplifted eyes.
 
"Look in the basket, Violet," cried Fritz, taking no notice of Evelina's wrath; "there is something in it that I want thee to see, and it is all—" Before, however, Fritz could finish his sentence, his mother had appeared in the doorway, and seizing Fritz by the collar of his coat, had dragged him backwards into the bakery.
 
"I will not have thee disturbing Violet with thy folly," she said angrily, and pushed him into the back passage.
 
Meantime Evelina, her own curiosity aroused, had drawn up the little cord from which dangled the basket.
 
"It is uncommonly light," she said, as she lifted it in at the window. "It strikes me, if I am not mistaken, that Master Fritz is at his old pranks again.[Pg 243] Yes, it is just as I thought; the basket is quite empty. It is just a silly trick he has played upon thee, and nothing else." Evelina turned the basket upside down as she spoke, and shook out some old dried moss and withered leaves, and a little scrap of dirty paper folded into a minute size, which fluttered down and lit on the window-seat beside Violet.
 
"Little wretch! I shall box his ears the next time I see him," cried Evelina angrily. "To come and waken people up for such a senseless joke."
 
"There was something in the basket," pleaded Violet in a low voice.
 
"I tell thee there was not," replied Evelina sharply; "unless thou callest a handful of dead leaves something."
 
The child's eyes rested wistfully on the little scrap of folded paper lying almost within her reach on the window-seat, but she said nothing. When Evelina was vexed, Violet felt afraid of her; and besides, she was down on her knees now gathering the moss and dirt off the floor, and she did not like to trouble her further.
 
But Evelina's tempers were never of long duration. When she stood up again she was smiling, and said with a laugh,—
 
"I have a mind to go across the street and tie this[Pg 244] basket on to Master Fritz's back and hunt him up and down the town for his pains. At any rate, the next time it ............