She laughed like a happy child, and perhaps in all Transylvania, that day, hers was the only happy laugh that was heard.
Aaron gathered a heap of dry twigs and made a fire, at which he taught Blanka to toast bread and broil bacon,--accomplishments not to be despised on occasions like this.
In half an hour the spring ceased to flow.

It stopped with a succession of muffled, gurgling sounds from the depths of its subterranean channel, ending finally with gulping down the greater part of the water that had filled the basin.

Then all was still once more.
Meanwhile something had occurred to trouble Blanka's happiness.

Two or three wasps, of that venomous kind of which half a dozen suffice to kill a horse, lured from their winter quarters by the smell of food, were buzzing about her ears in a manner that spoiled all her pleasure.

Aaron hastened to her assistance, and suspecting that the intruders had their nest in the hollow beech, he made preparations to smoke them out.
Setting fire to a bunch of dry grass, he inserted it in the hollow of the tree and confidently awaited results.