"It beats no more;--at least, not here in my breast," answered Peter. "But tell me, now you know what I mean, what will happen to our hearts?"
"My dear fellow, why worry about it?" Ezekiel laughingly remonstrated. "You have plenty to go through this life with, and that is all one wants. That is just the comfort of having a cold heart; we can never feel any fear at such thoughts."
"That's true enough; but one cannot help thinking of such things, even though one feels no dread of them; and I can well remember how terribly afraid of Hell I used to be when I was a little innocent boy."
"Well--it is certain that it will not go well with us hereafter," said Ezekiel. "I once asked a schoolmaster about it, and he told me that, after death, our hearts are weighed to find out how much they are burdened with sins committed. The light ones mount upwards; the heavy ones sink downwards; and our stone hearts will weigh a good bit, I'm thinking."
"That's very probable," replied Peter; "and I often feel very uneasy that my heart is so indifferent and unfeeling whenever such thoughts occur to me."
The night following this conversation Peter heard the well-known voice whisper five or six times in his ear: "Peter! get yourself a warmer heart!"
Although he felt no remorse that he had killed her, yet when he told his servants that his wife had gone on a journey, he could not help thinking: "Ah, but whither has she gone?"
Six days passed in this manner; every night he heard the voice, while the little forest-spirit's terrible threat rang continually in his ears. On the seventh morning he sprang out of bed, crying: "Come, I will see if I can get a warmer heart, for this insensible stone in my breast makes life too wearisome and dull for anything!"
He put on his best clothes, mounted his horse and rode off to the Pine-grove.
Having arrived at the spot where the pines grew thickest, he dismounted, tied his horse to a tree, and then strode swiftly to the summit of the hill, and taking his stand before the great pine, he repeated the old rhyme: