What sound is that? A ringing of bells. It wakens Rudolph. He gazes about the room. On a stand in the corner a lamp is dimly burning. Some one is sitting here beside the bed. “Oh, go away, good sir, and leave me in peace!” he moans piteously. “Did I not offer thee all the gold in my purse? Why, then, dost thou trouble me? Do no murder, I beseech thee, for I am old and feeble, and I have not slept before in a hundred years.”
“Thou art dreaming, Rudolph. There is nothing to fear.”
“Thou, my father!” and he seizes the two toil-hardened hands, covering them with kisses and with tears. “How camest thou here? I feared I should never behold thy face again! And where are my mother and my brother?”
“The dear mother and our little Karl will see thee in the morning to wish thee a ‘Happy New Year.’”
A Happy New Year! Rudolph puts his hand to his forehead, as if to smooth out some knot there underneath. “Truly, I do not know,” he murmurs, “it all seemed so real. Have I been dreaming, dear father?”
And then the father explains how he heard wailing and shrieking in the night, and came to learn the cause, but, fearing a fever, staid to watch awhile.
“It is hard, dear father, that after thou hast been working all the day thou must needs watch all the night.”
“I would do much more than that for Rudolph, although he is ‘only the son of a carpenter.’”
“Alas, that I talked in my sleep!”