From the village, lying in a shroud of mist, come the measured sounds of the thresher's flail, now in sudden volleys, now slowly and with a dragging cadence, now in sharp, crackling bursts, and now again with a dull and hollow beat. Sometimes there is the noise of one flail only, but presently others have joined in on all sides. The children stand still and seem lost. Finally they stop knocking and calling, and sit down on some uprooted tree-stumps. The latter lie in a heap around the trunk of a mountain-ash which stands beside the house, and which is now radiant with its red berries. The children's eyes are again turned toward the door-but it is still locked.
"Father got those out of the Mossbrook Wood," said the girl, pointing to the stumps; and she added with a precocious look: "They give out lots of heat, and are worth quite a little; for there is a good deal of resin in them, and that burns like a torch. But chopping them brings in the most money."
"If I were already grown up," replied the boy, "I'd take father's big ax, and the beechwood mallet, and the two iron wedges, and the ash wedge and break it all up as if it were glass. And then I'd make a fine, pointed heap of it like the charcoal-burner, Mathew, makes in the woods; and when father comes home, how pleased he'll be! But you must not tell him who did it!" the boy concluded, raising a warning finger at his sister.
She seemed to have a dawning suspicion that it was useless to wait there for their father and mother, for she looked up at her brother very sadly. When her glance fell on his shoes, she said:
"Then you must have father's boots, too. But come, we will play ducks and drakes-you shall see that I can throw farther than you!"
As they walked away, the girl said:
"I'll give you a riddle to guess: What wood will warm you without your burning it?"
"The schoolmaster's ruler, when you get the spatters," answered the boy.
"No, that's not what I mean: The wood that you chop makes you warm without your burning it." And pausing by the hedge, she asked again:
"On a stick he has his head, And his jacket it is red, And filled with stone is he—Now who may he be?"
The boy bethought himself very gravely, and cried "Stop! You mustn't tell me what it is!—Why, its a hip!"
The girl nodded assentingly, and made a face as if this were the first time she had ever given him the riddle to guess; as a matter of fact, however, she had given it to him very often, and had used it many times to cheer him up.
The sun had dispersed the mist, and the little valley stood in glittering sheen, as the children turned away to the pond to skim flat stones on the water. As they passed the house the girl pressed the latch once more; but again the door did not open, nor was anything to be seen at the window. And now the children played merrily beside the pond, and the girl seemed quite content that her brother should be the more clever at the sport, and that he should boast of it and grow quite excited over it; indeed, she manifestly tried to be less clever at it, than she really was, for the stones she threw almost always plumped down to the bottom as soon as they struck the water—for which she got properly laughed at by her companion. In the excitement of the sport the children quite forgot where they were and why they had come there—and yet it was a strange and sorrowful occasion.
In the house, which was now so tightly locked up, there had lived, but a short time before, one Josenhans, with his wife and their two children, Amrei (Anna Marie) and Damie (Damien). The father was a woodcutter in the forest, and was, moreover, an adept at various kinds of work; the house, which was in a dilapidated state when he bought it, he had himself repaired and reroofed, and in the autumn he was going to whitewash it inside—the lime was already lying prepared in the trench, covered with withered branches. His wife was one of the best day-laboring women in the village—ready for anything, day and night, in weal and in woe; for she had trained her children, especially Amrei, to manage for themselves at an early age. Industry and frugal contentment made the house one of the happiest in the village. Then came a deadly sickness which snatched away the mother, and the following evening, the father; and a few days later two coffins were carried away from the little house. The children had been taken immediately into the next house, to "Coaly Mathew," and they did not know of their parents' death until they were dressed in their Sunday clothes to follow the bodies.
Josenhans and his wife had no near relations in the place, but there was, nevertheless, loud weeping heard, and much mournful praise of the dead couple. The village magistrate walked with one of the children at each hand behind the two coffins. Even at the grave the children were quiet and unconscious, indeed, almost cheerful, though they often asked for their father and mother. They dined at the magistrate's house, and everybody was exceedingly kind to them; and when they got up from the table, each one received a parcel of cakes to take away.
But that evening, when, according to an arrangement of the village authorities, "Crappy Zachy" came to get Damie, and Black Marianne called for Amrei, the children refused to separate from each other, and cried aloud, and wanted to go home. Damie soon allowed himself to be pacified by all sorts of promises, but Amrei obliged them to use force—she would not move from the spot, and the magistrate's foreman had to carry her in his arms into Black Marianne's house. There she found her own bed—the one she had used at home—but she would not lie down on it. Finally, however, exhausted by crying, she fell asleep on the floor and was put to bed in her clothes. Damie, too, was heard weeping aloud at Crappy Zachy's, and even screaming pitiably, but soon after he was silent.
The much-defamed Black Marianne, on the other hand, showed on this first evening how quietly anxious she was about her foster-child. For many, many years she had not had a child about her, and now she stood before the sleeping girl and said, almost aloud:
"Happy sleep of childhood! Happy children who can be crying, and before you look around they are asleep, without worry or restless tossing!"
She sighed deeply.
The next morning Amrei went early to her brother to help him dress himself, and consoled him concerning what had happened to him, declaring that when their father came home he would pay off Crappy Zachy. Then the two children went out to their parents' house, knocked at the door and wept aloud, until Coaly Mathew, who lived near there, came and took them to school. He asked the master to explain to the children that their parents were dead, because he himself could not make it clear to them—Amrei especially seemed determined not to understand it. The master did all he could, and the children became quiet. But from the school they went back to the empty house and waited there, hungry and forsaken, until they were fetched away.
Josenhans' house was taken by the mortgagee, and the payment the deceased had made upon it was lost; for the value of houses had decreased enormously through emigration; many houses in the village stood empty, and Josenhans' dwelling also remained unoccupied. All the movable property had been sold, and a small sum had thus been realized for the children, but it was not nearly enough to pay for their board; they were consequently parish children, and as such were placed with those