Amrei began to weep aloud, and Damie wept with her; even the uncle dried his eyes.  He again urged them to come away from the place; he was vexed for having caused himself and the children this grief.  But Amrei said in a decided way: 

“Even if you do go, I shall not go with you.”

“How do you mean?  You will not go with me at all?”

Amrei started; for she suddenly realized what she had said, and it seemed to her almost as if it had been an inspiration.  But presently she answered: 

“No, I don’t know about that yet.  I merely meant to say, that I shall not willingly leave this house until I have seen everything again.  Come, Damie, you are my brother—­come up into the attic.  Do you remember where we used to play hide-and-seek, behind the chimney?  And then we’ll look out of the window, where we dried the truffles.  Don’t you remember the bright florin father got for them?”

Something rustled and pattered across the ceiling.  All three started, and the uncle said quickly: 

“Stay where you are, Damie, and you too.  What do you want up there?  Don’t you hear the mice running about?”

“Come with me—­they won’t eat us!” Amrei insisted.  Damie, however, declared that he would not go, and Amrei, although she felt a secret fear, took courage and went upstairs alone.  But she soon came down again, looking as pale as death, with nothing in her hand but a bundle of old straws.

“Damie says he’ll go with me to America,” said the uncle, as she came forward.  Amrei, breaking up the straws in her hands, replied:  “I’ve nothing to say against it.  I don’t know yet what I shall do, but he can go if he likes.”

“No,” cried Damie, “I shan’t do that.  You did not go with Dame Landfried when she wanted to take you away, and so I shall not go off alone without you.”

“Well, then, think it over—­you are sensible enough,” said the uncle, to conclude the matter.  He then closed the shutters again, so that they stood in the dark, and hurried the children out of the room and through the vestibule, locked the outside door, and went to take the key back to Coaly Mathew.  After that he started for the village with Damie alone.  When he was some way off, he called back to Amrei: 

“You have until tomorrow morning—­then I shall go away whether you go with me or not.”

Amrei was left alone.  She looked after the retreating figures and wondered how one person could go away from another.

“There he goes,” she thought, “and yet he belongs to you, and you to him.”

Strange!  As in a sleep-dream, a subject that has been lightly touched upon is renewed and interwoven with all sorts of strange details, so was it now with Amrei in her waking-dream.  Damie had made but a passing allusion to the meeting with Farmer Landfried’s wife.  The remembrance of her had half faded away; but now it suddenly rose up fresh again—­like a picture of past life in a vision.  Amrei said to herself, almost aloud: