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“What is the matter, my sweet bird?” said Hulda, for the bird pecked her wrist, and fluttered its wings, and opened its beak as if it were very much frightened.

“Let us go, mother, and look about us,” said Hulda.

So they both got up and wandered all over the gardens; but the pedlar, in the meantime, had walked on toward the town, and they saw nothing of him.

“Sing to me, my sweet bird,” said Hulda that night as she lay down to sleep. “Tell me why you pecked my wrist.”

Then the bird sang to her:

“Who came from the ruin, the ivy-clad ruin,
With old shaking arches, all moss overgrown,
Where the flitter-bat hideth,
The limber snake glideth,
And chill water drips from the slimy green stone?”

“Who did?” asked Hulda. “Not the pedlar, surely? Tell me, my pretty bird.” But the bird only chirped a little and fluttered its golden wings, so Hulda ceased to ask it, and presently fell asleep, but the bird woke her by pecking her wrist very early, almost before sunrise, and sang:

“Who dips a brown hand in the chill shaded water,
The water that drips from a slimy green stone?
Who flings his red cap
At the owlets that flap
Their white wings in his face as he sits there alone?”

Hulda, upon hearing this, arose in great haste and dressed herself; then she went to her father and mother, and entreated that they would come with her to the old ruin. It was now broad day, so they all three set out together. It was a very hot morning, the dust lay thick upon the road, and there was not air enough to stir the thick leaves of the trees which hung overhead.

They had not gone far before they found themselves in a crowd of people, all going toward the castle ruin, for there, they told Hulda, the pedlar, the famous pedlar from the north, who sold such fine wares, was going to perform some feats of jugglery of most surprising cleverness.

“Child,” whispered Hulda’s mother, “nothing could be more fortunate for us; let us mingle with the crowd and get close to the pedlar.”

Hulda assented to her mother’s wish, but the heat and dust, together with her own intense desire to rescue the lost wand, made her tremble so that she had great difficulty in walking. They went among gypsies, fruit-women, peasant girls, children, travelling musicians, common soldiers, and laborers; the heat increased, and the dust and the noise, and at last Hulda and her parents were borne forward into the old ruin among a rush of people running and huzzaing, and heard the pedlar shout to them:

“Keep back, good people; leave a space before me; leave a large space between me and you.”

So they pressed back again, jostling and crowding each other, and left an open space before him from which he looked at them with his cunning black eyes, and with one hand dabbling in the cold water of the spring.

The place was open to the sky, and the broken arches and walls were covered with thick ivy and wall flowers. The pedlar sat on a large gray stone, with his red cap on and his brown fingers adorned with splendid rings, and he spread them out and waved his hands to the people with ostentatious ceremony.

“Now, good people,” he said, without rising from his seat, “you are about to see the finest, rarest, and most wonderful exhibition of the conjuring art ever known!”

“Stop!” cried a woman’s voice from the crowd, and a young girl rushed wildly forward from the people, who had been trying to hold her back.

“I impeach you before all these witnesses!” she cried, seizing him by the hand. “See justice done, good people. I impeach you, pedlar. Where’s the ring–my mother’s ring–which you stole on Midsummer’s day in the castle?”