It is evening. Yonder by the fire sits one of Meta’s aunts, working away at her “rock and her reel,” as she seemed always working, spinning, spinning, spinning.
Meta near her, with her zither. She had been playing, but her fingers now lay listlessly on her strings, only now and then some sweet wailing notes and chords were brought out as if the hands were en rapport with her heart.
“And you really say you saw him in your dreams, dear auntie?”
Whirr—whirr—whirr, went the wheel.
“I saw him,” replied the kindly but ancient dame. “I saw him. I can see him now as I saw him in my dream. He is lying on the ground, and his face hardly less pale than the snow.” Whirr—whirr—it—it. “Oh, auntie, don’t frighten me, dear!”
“But kindly men are kneeling by him. They raise him. He revives. The blood returns to his cheeks. He will live!”
“Bless you, auntie, bless you!” Whirr—whirr went the wheel. The snow-flea in his cage twittered fondly. The raven on his log, which he seemed never to leave, stretched himself a leg at a time, then both wings at once. He was very old, that raven, and Poe’s looked not more weird, and—
“His mate long dead, his nestlings flown,
The moss had o’er his eyrie grown,
While all the scenes his youth had known
Were changed and old.”
Meta plays now; she is more happy. Her aunt has given her hope.
But somehow she does not play long; she is easily tired now, so she rises and lays aside the instrument, then stands by the window to watch the snowy mountain peaks changing to pink and to purple in the sun’s parting rays.