For a moment I stood still, and considered what this really could mean, when a horrible noise, as if cats were sent with yells lumbering down the whole flight of stairs, and ended with a mighty blow against my door, put an end to my indecision.  I took up the candle, and a stick, and went out.  At the moment when I opened the door my light was blown out.  A gigantic white figure glimmered opposite to me, and I felt myself suddenly embraced by two strong arms.  I cried for help, and struggled so actively to get loose that both myself and my adversary fell to the ground, but so that I lay uppermost.  Like an arrow I sprang again upright, and was about to fetch a light, when I stumbled over something—­Heaven knows what it was (I firmly believe that somebody held me fast by the feet), by which I fell a second time, struck my head on the corner of the table, and lost my consciousness, whilst a suspicions noise, which had great resemblance to laughter, rang in my ears.

When I again opened my eyes, they met a dazzling blaze of light.  I closed them again, and listened to a confused noise around me—­ opened them again a very little, and endeavoured to distinguish the objects which surrounded me, which appeared to me so enigmatical and strange that I almost feared my mind had vanished.  I lay upon a sofa, and—­no, I really did not deceive myself,—­that charming girl, who on this evening had so incessantly floated before my thoughts, stood actually beside me, and with a heavenly expression of sympathy bathed my head with vinegar.  A young man whose countenance seemed known to me held my hand between his.  I perceived also the fat gentleman, another thin one, the lady, the children, and in distant twilight I saw the shimmer of the paradise of the tea-table; in short, I found myself by an incomprehensible whim of fate amidst the family which an hour before I had contemplated with such lively sympathy.

When I again had returned to full consciousness, the young man embraced me several times with military vehemence.

“Do you then no longer know me?” cried he indignantly, as he saw me petrified body and soul.  “Have you then forgotten August D—­, whose life a short time since you saved at the peril of your own? whom you so handsomely fished up, with danger to yourself, from having for ever to remain in the uninteresting company of fishes?  See here, my father, my mother, my sister, Wilhelmina!”

I pressed his hand; and now the parents embraced me.  With a stout blow of the fist upon the table, August’s father exclaimed, “And because you have saved my son’s life, and because you are such a downright honest and good fellow, and have suffered hunger yourself—­that you might give others to eat—­you shall really have the parsonage at H—.  Yes, you shall become clergyman, I say!—­I have jus patronatum, you understand!”

For a good while I was not at all in a condition to comprehend, to think, or to speak; and before all had been cleared up by a thousand explanations, I could understand nothing clearly excepting that Wilhelmina was not—­that Wilhelmina was August’s sister.