"'I do not like these silly jokes, and if I say a thing it must be.'
"Willi was silent, but under her fair plaits the same resolve remained.
"Now hear the terrible part. In the same night that I slept there Johnnie got ill with fever. The doctor was sent for in haste; the whole house was upset, and before I could leave the village that I was leisurely pacing, little Johnnie grew pale and still, the whole farm silent as the grave, and only the sobs of women were heard through the open window as they laid the boy in his coffin. The farmer's wife was quite broken down, she wept and moaned incessantly; the farmer bit his teeth together in wild grief. Willi did her work, but often passed her hands across her eyes; only whenever the bailiff would come near her, she turned her back and went away.
"It was long before I went that road again; I could not look at the poor things. Only now have I passed once more. I wanted so much to know what the people were doing, and whether Willi had married the Raven farmer to comfort her father, since his pride, his darling, his crown prince lay in the grave. Oh, mother, mother, had I not brought them misfortune enough! There they stood, all three, upon the threshold, and the north wind howled around them. The old woman was holding her apron before her eyes; the father was angry like a wild bull. He shook Willi and turned her adrift with the words—
"'Away from my house, wench; I know you not.'
"Willi's face was pale as death, but unmoved. No sound crossed her lips, no prayers, no complaint. The door of her home fell sounding into its lock, and Willi, wrapped in a shawl, stood outside in the north wind. But under her shawl something moved, which she shielded tenderly, and that soon began to cry for its mother's breast. Then her face grew rather softer, and she looked anxiously at the little creature with whom she was thus left alone this wintry night—she, the daughter of the rich farmer of The Holt. She did not seem strong on her feet and had often to stop by the roadside, now to rest, now to quiet the child. Thus she went on all night along the high road till she reached a strange village. There she sought shelter from the wind under a porch, seated herself on the stone steps and fell asleep. But scarcely had day dawned before she was chased away by the maid who had come to sweep, and who threw hard words at her. The wind had abated a little, but she was so numbed that she tottered on her feet.
"After a while she managed to walk again, and thus she passed through the whole large village, over the hard frozen ground, under the gray leaden sky that grew darker, more glowering as the day advanced. The child would no longer be quieted, and cried often and long. So poor Willi went from house to house and begged for work.
"'We want no maid with a child,' was the hard reply she received every where, or 'What can we do with the little screamer?'