The mole took a piece of tinder, which shines like fire in the dark, in his mouth, and went on first to light his friends through the long dark passage, and when they came to the place where the dead bird lay, he thrust his broad nose up against the ceiling and pushed up the earth, so as to make a great hole for the light to come through. In the midst of the floor lay a swallow, his wings clinging firmly to his sides, his head and legs drawn under the feathers; the poor bird had evidently died of cold. Tommelise felt so very sorry, for she loved all the little birds, who had sung and chirped so merrily to her the whole summer long; but the mole kicked it with his short legs, saying, ‘Here’s a fine end to all its whistling! a miserable thing it must be to be born a bird. None of my children will be birds, that’s a comfort! Such creatures have nothing but their “quivit,” and must be starved to death in the winter.’
‘Yes, indeed, a sensible animal like you may well say so,’ returned the field-mouse; ‘what has the bird got by all his chirping and chirruping? when winter comes it must starve and freeze; and it is such a great creature too!’
Tommelise said nothing, but when the two others had turned their backs upon the bird, she bent over it, smoothed down the feathers that covered its head, and kissed the closed eyes. ‘Perhaps it was this one that sang so delightfully to me in the summer-time,’ thought she; ‘how much pleasure it has given me, the dear, dear bird!’
The mole now stopped up the hole through which the daylight had pierced, and then followed the ladies home. But Tommelise could not sleep that night, so she got out of her bed, and wove a carpet out of hay, and then went out and spread it round the dead bird; she also fetched some soft cotton from the field-mouse’s room, which she laid over the bird, that it might be warm amid the cold earth.
‘Farewell, thou dear bird,’ said she; ‘farewell, and thanks for thy beautiful song in the summer-time, when all the trees were green, and the sun shone so warmly upon us!’ And she pressed her head against the bird’s breast, but was terrified to feel something beating within it. It was the bird’s heart. The bird was not dead; it had lain in a swoon, and now that it was warmer its life returned.
Every autumn all the swallows fly away to warm countries; but if one of them linger behind, it freezes and falls down as though dead, and the cold snow covers it.
Tommelise trembled with fright, for the bird was very large compared with her, who was only an inch in length. However, she took courage, laid the cotton more closely round the poor swallow, and fetching a leaf which had served herself as a coverlet, spread it over the bird’s head.
The next night she stole out again, and found that the bird’s life had quite returned, though it was so feeble that only for one short moment could it open its eyes to look at Tommelise, who stood by with a piece of tinder in her hand—she had no other lantern.
‘Thanks to thee, thou sweet little child!’ said the sick swallow. ‘I feel delightfully warm now; soon I shall recover my strength, and be able to fly again, out in the warm sunshine.’
‘Oh, no,’ she replied, ‘it is too cold without, it snows and freezes! Thou must stay in thy warm bed; I will take care of thee.’