The old man stood a long time and watched, so long that in the end he broke down, overcome by fatigue, hunger, and thirst, and all the misery of life.
Then the gate was opened and a little girl in a white dress came out. She carried a silver tray in her hand, and on the tray stood a glass filled with wine, the reddest wine which the old man had ever seen. And the child went up to the old man and said:
“Come now, daddy, you must drink this!”
The old man took the glass and drank. It was the rich man’s wine, which had grown a long way off in the sunny South; and it tasted like the sweetness of a good life when it is at its very best.
“This is compassion,” said his own old broken voice. “But you, child, in your ignorance, you wouldn’t have brought me this wine if you had known who I am. Do you know what I am?”
“Yes, you are a prisoner, I know that,” replied the little girl.
When the old stone man went back, he was no longer a man of stone, for something in him had begun to quicken.
And as he passed a steep incline, he saw a tree with many trunks, which looked like a shrub. It was more beautiful than the others; it was a buckthorn tree, but the old man did not know it. A restless little bird, black and white like a swallow, fluttered from branch to branch. The peasants call it tree-swallow, but its name is something else. And it sat in the foliage and sang a sweet sad song:
In mud, in mud, in mud you died, From mud, from mud, from mud you rose.
It was exactly as it had been in his dream. And now the old man understood what the tree-swallow meant.