When they were ready and opened the kitchen door, Freneli had to make three attempts before she could get out, and Uli had to look for his hat on the other side of the kitchen.  Her aunt began to wail and to implore them in God’s name not to go; they would be killed!  But Freneli summoned all her strength for a third attempt, and vanished in the snow-flurry; her aunt’s lamentations died away unheard.  It was really almost a break-neck undertaking, and Uli had to help the girl.  With the wind directly in their faces, they often lost the road, had to stand still at times and look about them to see where they were and gather breath, or turn around to let the strongest gusts go by; it took them three-quarters of an hour to go the scant fifteen minutes’ walk to the parsonage.  There they first shook off the snow as well as they could, then knocked on the door.  But they knocked long in vain; the sound was swallowed up in the howling of the wind, which raged awesomely through the chimneys.  Then Freneli lost patience; in place of Uli’s reverent knock she now tried her own, and it was such that the indwellers started up from their seats and the pastor’s wife cried, “Mercy on us, what’s that?” But the pastor calmed her by saying that it was either a baptism or a wedding, only that, as usual, Mary had not heard their first knocks.  While Mary answered the door he was lighting a light, so that the people need not wait long, and as soon as Mary opened the door to say, “There’s two people here, Sir,” he was already stepping out.

Back of the house door stood the two, Freneli behind Uli.  The pastor, somewhat short, of middle age, but already venerable in appearance and with shrewd features that could be either very sharp or very pleasant, raised the light above his head, peered out with head bowed slightly forward, and cried at last, “Why, Uli, is it you, in such weather?  And I suppose Freneli’s behind you,” he said, letting the light fall on her.  “But dear me,” he cried, “in such weather?  And the good mistress let you go?  Come, Mary,” he called, “brush off these folks for me, and take this collar and dry it.”  Mary came up very willingly with her lamp.

Now the pastor’s wife opened the door, her light in her hand, and said, “Bring them in here, why don’t you?  It’s warmer than your study, and Freneli and I know each other right well.”  There stood Freneli now in the blaze of three lights, still between Uli and the door, not knowing what expression to assume.  Finally she put a good face on a bad game, as the saying goes, came forward, and saluted the pastor and his wife quite properly, saying that her aunt bade her wish them good evening, and Joggeli too.  All this Freneli said with the most innocent face in the world.

“But,” said the pastor, “why do you come in such a storm?  You might have lost your lives!”

“We couldn’t manage it any other way,” said Uli, who began to feel the man’s duty of taking his wife’s obstinacy on his own shoulders—­a duty which one must eventually fulfil of necessity, either to avoid appearing lien-pecked or to hide the weakness of his wife.  “We couldn’t wait any longer,” he continued, “as we wanted to ask the pastor to announce the affair here and there, so that it could be published next Sunday.”