She followed, and they disappeared.

Presently I saw the young man again, with some tools in his hand, cross the field behind the cottage; and the girl was also busied, sometimes in the house and sometimes in the yard.
"On examining my dwelling, I found that one of the windows of the cottage had formerly occupied a part of it, but the panes had been filled up with wood.

In one of these was a small and almost imperceptible chink through which the eye could just penetrate.
Through this crevice a small room was visible, whitewashed and clean but very bare of furniture.

In one corner, near a small fire, sat an old man, leaning his head on his hands in a disconsolate attitude.

The young girl was occupied in arranging the cottage; but presently she took something out of a drawer, which employed her hands, and she sat down beside the old man, who, taking up an instrument, began to play and to produce sounds sweeter than the voice of the thrush or the nightingale.