An illness now laid hold upon him, through which Johanna and Lisbeth nursed him with untiring care. During the weary weeks of his slow return to life, Dietrich turned to Johanna as the flower turns to the sunshine; and, indeed, she was his one ray of comfort, and in her presence only could he shake off the gloom that overshadowed him. He was glad enough to obey his mother’s wish, and make Johanna his wife as soon as might be; and the girl’s loving heart did not shrink from the lifelong task of cheering this broken-down man.
So she went to live in the cottage, and in due time a little son, too, came to brighten their home. Dietrich worked as usual again, but always showed an unconquerable dislike to going near the river or the lake; and the sight of a snake was enough to send him into a fit of shuddering terror, such as none could understand.
Time went on, and Johanna fancied that he was becoming more like himself again, till one day he happened to notice, in an open space beside the cottage, a tiny oak sapling springing up from the grass.
“Dost thou know how yonder little tree came there?” he asked of his wife.
“To be sure,” replied Johanna. “One day, when thou wert sick, and I was heavy at heart, and came out here for a breath of air, I found an acorn in the wood, and bethought me of planting it here. ‘If it grows up,’ I thought, ‘I shall take it as a good omen;’ and now, see how it thrives!” Johanna laughed merrily, but Dietrich’s face darkened.
“A good omen,” he murmured. “Who knows? ‘When the oak-tree is sprung from the acorn——’ I cannot read the saying.”
That night Lisbeth said to her daughter-in-law: “My son looks again as he did in those unhappy days. Didst thou not notice the terror-struck look he wore this evening? Heaven help us!”
Johanna laughed it off, but in a few days she said to her mother: “Thou wert right; he goes down to the river-banks again, as he used. What shall we do?”
There seemed nothing to be done. Neither his wife nor his little son could cheer him any longer. Once Johanna saw him stride out to the open patch, and make as though he would have torn the sapling up by the roots, but he suddenly stopped, as though an invisible hand had held him, and turned down through the woods to the river.