"Then the flowers--who can count the numbers and varieties of the flowers which grew on those hills, and which budded and bloomed through all the lovely months of spring, of summer, and of autumn? Sometimes the shepherds, as they sat in the shade watching their sheep, would play sweet tunes on their pipes and flutes, for a shepherd who could not use a flute was thought little of in those hills. It was sweet to hear those pipes and flutes from a little distance, when all was quiet among the hills, excepting the ever restless and ever dancing waters. There were many villages among the hills, each village having a valley to itself; but there is only one of these of which this story speaks.
"It was called Hartsberg, or the Town of the Deer, and was situated in one of the fairest valleys of the Hartsfells. The valley was accounted to be the fairest, because there was the finest cascade belonging to those hills rushing and roaring at the very farthest point of the valley; and the groves, too, on each side of the valley were very grand and old.
"The village itself was built in the Swiss fashion, chiefly of wood, with roofs of wooden tiles, called shingles; and many of them had covered galleries round the first floor. The only house much better than the others was the Protestant pastor's, though this was not much more than a large cottage, but it stood in a very neat garden.
"There were a few, but a very few, houses separate from this village itself, built on the sides of the hills; and those belonged to peasants, or small farmers.
"In the summer-time strangers sometimes came from a distance to look at the famous waterfall, and to gather such scarce flowers as they could find on the hills. It was a good thing for Heister Kamp, the widow who kept the little inn in the village, when these strangers came, for it not only put money into her pocket, but gave her something to talk of. She was the greatest gossip in the valley, and, like all gossips, the most curious person also, for nothing could pass but she must meddle and make with it; and it was very seldom that things were the better for her meddling.
"Most of the inhabitants of the village were Protestants, but there were a few Roman Catholics, and these had a priest, an elderly man, who was a great friend of Heister Kamp, and might often be seen in her kitchen, talking over with her the affairs of the village. He was called Father St. Goar, and he had a small chapel, and a little bit of a house attached to it. His chapel was less than the Protestant church, but it looked far more grand within, for there was an altar dressed with artificial flowers, and burnished brass candlesticks, and over it waxen figures of the Virgin Mary and her Child, in very gaudy though tarnished dresses.