It had long been night when she awoke as a voice cried, “Amrie, where art thou?” She rose up, but did not answer. She looked round astonished, and then at the stars, and it seemed to her that the voice came from Heaven. As it was repeated, she knew it was the voice of Mariann, and answered, “Here I am.” Now came Brown Mariann nearer and said, “Oh, it is well that I have found thee. The whole village is, as it were, gone mad! One said, ‘I have seen her in the woods;’ another, ‘I met her in the field;’ and to me it seemed as though thou hadst thrown thyself into the fish-pond. Thou needst not fear, dear child! thou needst not fly! No one can force thee to go with thy uncle!”
“Who has said that I will not go?” Suddenly a quick wind breathed through the tree, so that the branches rustled powerfully. “But certainly I will not,” said Amrie, and laid her hand upon the tree.
“Come home! a severe shower is rising, and we shall have a high wind immediately; come home,” urged Brown Mariann.
Giddily Amrie went with Mariann into the village. The night was pitch dark, and only by the sudden flashes of lightning could they see the houses which shone as in clear daylight, so that their eyes were blinded, and they stood still in the darkness when the lightning vanished. In their own village home they seemed bewildered as in a strange place, and stepped uncertain, and confusedly forwards. Bathed in perspiration they toiled forwards, and came at last under heavy drops of rain to their own door-stone. A gust of wind tore open the door, as Amrie cried, “Open!” She might have thought of a fairy tale where, at an enigmatical word, an enchanted castle opened.
CHAPTER V.
UPON THE HOLDER COMMON.
THE next morning when her uncle came, Amrie declared that she should remain at home. There was a strange mixture of bitterness and benevolence when her uncle said, “Indeed, thou tak’st after thy mother, who would never have any thing to do with us. But I cannot take Dami alone, even if he would go. For a long time he would do nothing but eat bread. Thou couldst have earned it.”
Amrie urged, “that for the present they would remain here in their village, and later, if her uncle remained of the same mind, she, with her brother, could go to him.”
The resolution of Amrie was somewhat shaken by the manner in which her uncle expressed his sympathy for the children, but she did not venture to say so, and only answered, “Greet your children and say to them, that it is very hard for me never to have seen my nearest relations, and as they are going over the sea, I shall probably never see them in my whole life.”