The Miller shrieked and ran out. For a moment he tore about the yard quite out of his wits and not knowing what to do. He ran to the cellar window, kicked in the glass and shouted; then he stooped down, seized the iron bars in his fists and shook them, bent them, tore them out.
Then he heard a voice from the cellar, a voice without words, a groan, as from a dead man in the ground; it sounded twice, and the Miller fled terror-struck from the window, across the yard, down the road and home. He dared not look behind him.
When a few minutes later he and Johannes came to the place, the whole Castle, the big old timber house, was in flames. A couple of men from the pier had also come up; but they could not do anything either. Everything was destroyed.
But the Miller's lips were silent as the grave.
XI
Ask of some what Love is and it will be no more than a breeze murmuring among the roses and then dying away. But again it is often like an inviolable seal that lasts for life, lasts till death. God has created it of many kinds and seen it endure or perish:
Two mothers are walking along a road and talking together. One of them is dressed in gay blue garments because her lover has come home from a journey. The other is dressed in mourning. She had three daughters, two of them dark, the third fair, and the fair one died. That is ten years ago, ten whole years, and still the mother wears mourning for her.
"It is so glorious today!" cries the blue-clad mother exulting, and claps her hands. "The warmth goes to my head, love has gone to my head, I am full of happiness. I could strip myself naked here on the road and stretch out my arms to the sun and send it kisses."
But the black-clad mother is silent and neither smiles nor makes reply.