The old woman laughed convulsively, and fell back in her bed. Amrei and John had knelt down beside her, and when they stood up and bent over her, she had ceased to breathe.
"Oh, heavens! She is dead! Joy killed her!" exclaimed Barefoot. "She took you for her son. She died happy. Oh, why is it thus in the world, why is it thus?" She sank down by the bed again, and sobbed bitterly.
At last John raised her up, and Barefoot closed the dead woman's eyes.
For a long time they stood together beside the bed; then Barefoot said:
"Come, I will wake up people who will watch by her body. God has been
very gracious; she would have no one to care for her when I was gone.
And God has given her the greatest joy in the last moment of her life.
How long, oh, how long, she waited for that joy!"
"Yes, but you cannot stay here now," said John. "You must go with me this very night."
Barefoot woke up the gravedigger's wife, and sent her to Black Marianne. Her mind was so wonderfully composed that she remembered to tell the woman that the flowers, which stood on her window-ledge at the farm, were to be planted on Black Marianne's grave; and especially that she was not to forget to put Black Marianne's hymn-book under her head, as she had always wished.
When at last she had arranged everything, she stood up erect and, stretching out her arms, said:
"Now everything is done. You must forgive me, good man, that I was obliged to bring you to a house of sorrow; and forgive me, too, if I am not now as I should wish to be. I see now that all is well, and that God has ordered it for the best. But still I shake with fear in every limb—it is a hard thing to die. You cannot imagine how I have almost puzzled my brains out about it. But now all is well, and I will be cheerful—for I am the happiest girl in the world!"
"Yes, you are right.—But come, let us go. Will you ride with me on my horse?" asked John.
"Yes. Is it the white horse that you had at the wedding at Endringen?"