’It was Easter morning, the bells were ringing, and the sun was at play in the heavens.  Waldemar Daa had watched through the night with his blood at fever pitch; boiling and cooling, mixing and distilling.  I heard him sigh like a despairing soul; I heard him pray, and I felt that he held his breath.  The lamp had gone out, but he never noticed it; I blew up the embers and they shone upon his ashen face, which took a tinge of colour from their light; his eyes started in their sockets, they grew larger and larger, as if they would leap out.

’Look at the alchemist’s glass! something twinkles in it; it is glowing, pure and heavy.  He lifted it with a trembling hand and shouted with a trembling voice:  “Gold! gold!” He reeled, and I could easily have blown him over,’ said the wind, ’but I only blew upon the embers, and followed him to the room where his daughters sat shivering.  His coat was powdered with ash, as well as his beard and his matted hair.  He drew himself up to his full height and held up his precious treasure, in the fragile glass:  “Found! won! gold!” he cried, stretching up his hand with the glass which glittered in the sunbeams:  his hand shook, and the alchemist’s glass fell to the ground shivered into a thousand atoms.  The last bubble of his welfare was shattered too.  Whew! whew! fare away! and away I rushed from the goldmaker’s home.

[Illustration:  He lifted it with a trembling hand and shouted with a trembling voice:  ’Gold! gold!’]

’Late in the year, when the days were short and dark up here, and the fog envelops the red berries and bare branches with its cold moisture, I came along in a lively mood clearing the sky and snapping off the dead boughs.  This is no great labour, it is true, yet it has to be done.  Borreby Hall, the home of Waldemar Daa, was having a clean sweep of a different sort.  The family enemy, Ove Ramel from Basness, appeared, holding the mortgage of the Hall and all its contents.  I drummed upon the cracked window panes, beat against the decaying doors, and whistled through all the cracks and crannies, whew!  I did my best to prevent Herr Ove taking a fancy to stay there.  Ida and Anna Dorothea faced it bravely, although they shed some tears; Johanna stood pale and erect and bit her finger till it bled!  Much that would help her!  Ove Ramel offered to let them stay on at the Castle for Waldemar Daa’s lifetime, but he got no thanks for his offer; I was listening.  I saw the ruined gentleman stiffen his neck and hold his head higher than ever.  I beat against the walls and the old linden trees with such force that the thickest branch broke, although it was not a bit rotten.  It fell across the gate like a broom, as if some one was about to sweep; and a sweeping there was indeed to be.  I quite expected it.  It was a grievous day and a hard time for them, but their wills were as stubborn as their necks were stiff.  They had not a possession in the world but the clothes on their backs; yes, one thing—­an