Towards morning she woke feeling cold; Granny was dead and cold. Suddenly she understood the awfulness of it all, and hurrying into her clothes, she fled.
She ran across the fields in the direction of home, but when she reached the road leading to the sea, she went along it to Per Nielsen's farm. There they picked her up, benumbed with misery. "Granny's dead!" she broke out over and over again, looking from one to the other with terror in her eyes. That was all they could get out of her. When they proposed taking her home to the Crow's Nest, she began to scream, so they put her to bed, to rest.
When she woke later in the day, Per Nielsen came in to her. "Well, I suppose you'd better be thinking of getting home," said he. "I'll go with you."
Ditte gazed at him with fear in her eyes.
"Are you afraid of your stepfather?" asked he. She did not answer. The wife came in.
"I don't know what we're to do," said he, "she's afraid to go home. The stepfather can't be very good to her."
Ditte turned sharply towards him. "I want to go home to Lars Peter," she said, sobbing.