“I am not cold, Conrad,” she answered.

“Yes indeed you are, Sanna, get up,” he cried.

“My fur-jacket is warm,” she said.

“I shall help you up,” he said.

“No,” she replied, and lay still.

Then something else occurred to the boy.  Grandmother had said:  “Just one little mouthful of it will warm the stomach so that one’s body will not be cold on the coldest winter day.”

He reached for his little calfskin knapsack, opened it, and groped around in it until he found the little flask into which grandmother had put the black coffee for mother.  He took away the wrappings from the bottle and with some exertion uncorked it.  Then he bent down to Sanna and said:  “Here is the coffee that grandmother sends mother, taste a little of it, it will make you feel warm.  Mother would give it to us if she knew what we needed it for.”

The little girl, who was by nature inclined to be passive, answered, “I am not cold.”

“Just take a little,” urged the boy, “and then you may go to sleep again.”

This expectation tempted Sanna and she mastered herself so far that she took a swallow of the liquor.  Then the boy drank a little, too.

The exceedingly strong extract took effect at once and all the more powerfully as the children had never in their life tasted coffee.  Instead of going to sleep, Sanna became more active and acknowledged that she was cold, but that she felt nice and warm inside, and that the warmth was already passing into her hands and feet.  The children even spoke a while together.

In this fashion they drank ever more of the liquor in spite of its bitter taste as the effect of it began to die away and roused their nerves to a fever heat which was able to counteract their utter weariness.

It had become midnight, meanwhile.  As they still were so young, and because on every Christmas eve in the excess of their joy they went to bed very late and only after being overcome by sleep, they never had heard the midnight tolling, and never the organ of the church when holy mass was being celebrated, although they lived close by.  At this moment of the Holy Night, all bells were being rung, the bells of Millsdorf were ringing, the bells of Gschaid were ringing, and behind the mountain there was still another church whose three bells were pealing brightly.  In the distant lands outside the valley there were innumerable churches and bells, and all of them were ringing at this moment, from village to village the wave of sound traveled, from one village to another one could hear the peal through the bare branches of the trees; but up to the children there came not a sound, nothing was heard here, for nothing was to be announced here.  In the winding valleys, the lights of lanterns gleamed along the mountain-slopes, and from many a farm came the sound of the farm bell to rouse the hands.  But far less could all this be seen and heard up here.  Only the stars gleamed and calmly twinkled and shone.