“Come down!  I’ll promise you what you want!” cried Amrei; and in a moment Damie was down on the ground beside her.

When she got home, Black Marianne called her a foolish child and scolded her for making a wreath for herself out of the berries that were intended for her parents’ graves.  Marianne quickly destroyed the wreath, muttering a few words which the children could not understand.  Then she took them both by the hand and led them out to the churchyard; and passing where two mounds lay close together, she said: 

“There are your parents!”

The children looked at each other in surprise.  Marianne then made a cross-shaped furrow in each of the mounds, and showed the children how to stick the berries in.  Damie was handy at the work, and boasted because his red cross was finished sooner than his sister’s.  Amrei looked at him fixedly and made no answer; but when Damie said, “That will please father,” she struck him on the back and said:  “Be quiet!”

Damie began to cry, perhaps louder than he really meant to.  Then Amrei called out: 

“For heaven’s sake, forgive me!—­forgive me for doing that to you.  Right here, I promise you that I’ll do all I can for you, all my life long, and give you everything I have.  I didn’t hurt you, Damie, did I?  You may depend upon it, it shall not happen again as long as I live—­never again!—­never!  Oh, mother!  Oh, father!  I shall be good, I promise you!  Oh, mother!  Oh, father!”

She could say no more; but she did not weep aloud, although it was plain that her heart was almost bursting.  Not until Black Marianne burst out crying did Amrei weep with her.

They returned home, and when Damie said “Good night,” Amrei whispered into his ear: 

“Now I know that we shall never see our parents again in this world.”

Even from making this communication she derived a certain satisfaction—­a childish pride which is awakened by having something to impart.  And yet in this child’s heart there had dawned something like a realization that one of the great ties in her life had been severed forever, the thought that arises with the consciousness that a parent is no longer with us.

When the lips which called thee child have been sealed by death, a breath has vanished from thy life that shall nevermore return.

While Black Marianne was sitting beside the child’s bed, the little one said: 

“I seem to be falling and falling, on and on.  Let me keep hold of your hand.”

Holding the hand fast, she dropped into a slumber; but as often as Black Marianne tried to draw her hand away, she clutched at it again.  Marianne understood what this sensation of endless falling signified for the child; she felt in realizing her parents’ death as if she were being wafted along, without knowing whence or whither.

It was not until nearly midnight that Marianne was able to quit the child’s bedside, after she had repeated her usual twelve Paternosters over and over again, who knows how many times?  A look of stern defiance was on the face of the sleeping child.  She had laid one hand across her bosom; Black Marianne gently lifted it, and said, half-aloud, to herself: