Suddenly Catherine shrunk back. "Conrad!" she cried. "O, my God! Lambert, what are we beginning?"
"What has happened, my darling?" asked Lambert, while he sought again to draw the beloved one to him.
"No, no," said Catherine, "this must first be arranged. O, why did I not tell you? But how could I speak of it before? Now indeed I must speak, even though it be too late."
Without hesitating and in a becoming manner she told Lambert what Conrad had said in the morning, and how strange his conduct, and how threatening his appearance had been. "I seem constantly to hear his laugh," said she at last. "Great God, there he is!"
She pointed with her trembling hand up the creek to the place where, between the dark underwood, the foam-streaks of the waterfall fluttered.
"Conrad! I thought I saw him slipping away between the trunks of the trees."
"Then he would be there yet," said he. "It must have been a deer that wanted to go to the spring. Surely you are causelessly frightened. I can well believe that the youth finds my beautiful girl handsome, but love as I do, that he cannot. Hereafter he will be happy in seeing me happy."
"But now I surely have heard a human voice," cried Catherine.
"I, too, this time," said Lambert, "but it came from up the creek. Hark!"
"He, holla, holla, he, ho!" it now sounded.
"That is Aunt Ursul," said Lambert. "How does she come now to be here?"
A dark shadow passed over his face, which however at once disappeared as Catherine impressed a hearty kiss on his lips, and said: "Quick, Lambert; let us now go to meet your aunt. See that she observes nothing. Do you hear?"
"There she is already," said Lambert, half vexed, half laughing, as now a large person, whose clothes were an unusual mixture of women's and men's clothing, and who, carrying a rifle on her shoulder, pressing through the bushes, soon reached the pair.
"So!" said Aunt Ursul. "There yon are, sir!"
She remained standing, took her rifle from her shoulder and looked with large, round eyes on those who were approaching, like a beast of prey on a coming victim.
"God bless you, aunt," said Lambert, extending his hand to his old friend in salutation. "It is long since we have seen each other."
"And it might have been longer had it depended on you, sir," replied Aunt Ursul. "But one must first visit his pinery. Relatives and friends come later. It is fortunate that Aunt Ursul knows her people, or she might have had to look long for you, sir."