"Very well," said Amrei, "tomorrow I will bring my bundle. But now I should like to take my bundle with me; give me a bottle of wine, and this meat I will wrap up and take to Marianne and my Damie."
They let Amrei have her way; but old Farmer Rodel said to her secretly:
"Give me back my sixpence—I thought you were going to give it up."
"I'll keep that as an earnest from you," answered Amrei slyly; "you shall see, I will give you value for it." Farmer Rodel laughed to himself half angrily, and Amrei went back to Black Marianne with money, wine, and meat.
The house was locked; and there was a great contrast between the loud music and noise and feasting at the wedding house, and the silence and solitude here. Amrei knew where to wait for Marianne on her way home, for the old woman very often went to the stone-quarry and sat there behind a hedge for a long time, listening to the tapping of chisels and mallets. It seemed to her like a melody, carrying her back to the times when her John used to work there too; and so she often sat there, listening and watching.
Sure enough, Amrei found Black Marianne there, and half an hour before quitting time she called Damie up out of the quarry. And here among the rocks a wedding feast was held, more merry than the one amid the noise and music. Damie was especially joyful, and Marianne, too, was unusually cheerful. But she would not drink a drop of the wine, for she had declared that no wine should moisten her lips until she drank it at her John's wedding. When Amrei told with glee how she had got a place at young Farmer Rodel's, and was going there tomorrow, Black Marianne started up in furious anger; picking up a stone and pressing it to her bosom, she said:
"It would be better a thousand times that I had this in me, a stone like this, than a living heart! Why cannot I be alone? Why did I ever allow myself to like anybody again? But now it's all over forever! You false, faithless child! Hardly are you able to raise your wings, than off you fly! But it is well. I am alone, and my John shall be alone, too, when he comes—and what I have wished would come to pass, shall never be!"
With that she ran off toward the village.
"She's a witch, after all," said Damie when she had disappeared. "I won't drink the wine—who knows if she has not bewitched it?"
"You can drink it—she's only a strict Eigenbrötlerin and she has a heavy cross to bear. I know how to win her back again," said Amrei, consolingly.