"What is she doing? What is that, father?" she whispered, full of fear, and dug her finger nails into her father's hand.
"She is dying!" said the dikemaster.
"Dying!" repeated the child, and seemed to have fallen, into a confused pondering.
But the old woman moved her lips once more: "Jens! Jens!" her screams broke out, like cries in danger, and her long arms were stretched out against the glittering reflection of the sea; "Help me! Help me! You are in the water---- God have mercy on the others!"
Her arms sank down, a low creaking of the bedstead could be heard; she had ceased to live.
The child drew a deep breath and lifted her pale eyes to her father's. "Is she still dying?" she asked.
"She has done it!" said the dikemaster, and took his child in his arms. "Now she is far from us with God."
"With God!" repeated the child and was silent for a while, as if she had to think about these words. "Is that good--with God?"
"Yes, that is the best." In Hauke's heart, however, the last words of the dying woman resounded heavily. "God have mercy on the others!" a low voice said within him. "What did the old hag mean? Are the dying prophets--?"
Soon after Trin Jans had been buried by the church, there was more and more talk about all kinds of mischief and strange vermin that had frightened the people in North Frisia, and there was no doubt that on mid-Lent Sunday the golden cock was thrown down by a whirlwind. It was true, too, that in midsummer a great cloud of vermin fell down, like snow, from the sky, so that one could scarcely open one's eyes, and afterwards it lay on the fens in a layer as high as a hand, and no one had ever seen anything like it. But at the end of September, after the hired man had driven to the city market with grain and the maid Ann Grethe with butter, they both climbed down, when they came home, with faces pale from fright. "What's the matter? What's the matter with you?" cried the other maids, who had come running out when they heard the wagon roll up.