The _gardes-champetres_ of the two dominions also used to
pass by often, the barrels of their muskets shining as they approached
and gleaming long after they had passed. Amrei was almost always
accosted by the _garde-champetre_ of Endringen as she sat by the
roadside, and he often made inquiries of her as to whether this or that
person had passed by. But she was never able to give the desired
information--or perhaps she kept it from him on purpose, on account of
the instinctive aversion the people, and especially the children, of a
village have for these men, whom they invariably look upon as the armed
enemies of the human race, going to and fro in search of some one to
devour.
Theisles Manz, who used to sit by the road breaking stones, hardly spoke
a word to Amrei; he would go sulkily from stone-heap to stone-heap, and
his knocking was more incessant than the tapping of the woodpecker in
Mossbrook Wood, and more regular than the piping and chirping of the
grasshoppers in the neighboring meadows and cloverfields.
[And so Amrei spent day after day at Holderwasen, watching the geese and
the passers-by, studying the birds and the flowers and the trees,
dreaming of her father and mother, and wondering what was in store for
Damie and herself. There was a trough of clear, fresh water by the
roadside, and Amrei used to bring a jug with her in order to offer it to
thirsty people who had nothing to drink out of.
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