Many a night the old water-fairy rose himself to the surface, many a time did his sons sit among the willows; and often the water-man could not sleep, and went restlessly through the rooms of his palace to see that everything was right.
It was only on nights when all in the crystal castle were fast asleep, and no discovery was to be feared, that the young nymph hastened to the little soul, opened her prison, by raising the edge of the bell, and rose with her for a sail in the lily-boat.
Years passed by, and with them hope died out from the little girl's soul; nothing remained to her but memory and longing. In the world above the water, what she had last seen young and fresh had grown gradually old. The playmates of her childhood had been married long ago, and some of them had entered on their eternal rest. Her father had never recovered the shock of that unhappy day, and the secret thought that he had excited the water-fairy's wrath by his defiant words, and had thus caused his dear child's death, gnawed at his life, and brought him to an untimely grave. Her mother alone was left. Her hair had grown white, not so much through age as through sorrow. Once, when in her solitude a deep longing seized her to see once more the place where her child had died, she entrusted the guidance of the boat to her brother's son, who was one day to fall heir to all her little possessions, and told him to take her to her darling's grave.
The boat reached its destination the night before Easter. Here, opposite the clump of willows, which had grown even denser than when she saw them last, and above which the spire of the village church raised its graceful form, the boat had stopped on that unhappy day so many years ago. Here, therefore, was the anchor lowered, and the boatman went to rest. But the mother, when she found herself so near the fatal spot, could not sleep. The most dreadful hour of her life, when she stood watching for the coming of her merry child, and saw instead but her pale, cold corpse, came again before her soul, and she passed the night in bitter weeping.
When the first gleam of daylight played on the stream, she rose and went on deck. All the stars had gone to rest except the morning star, and even its radiance grew gradually fainter; for the young day began to don his golden festive robe. The poor mother leaned over the edge of the boat, and looked down into the water. The sky was one glow of purple, and on the stream lay the roses of the dawn. The Easter sun rose slowly above the horizon, and as its first beam struck the river a sound of solemn melancholy came upwards from its depths.
"What was that?" said the woman, leaning forward to listen.
A second chime broke the stillness of the morning, and soon the bell began to ring in tones of wondrous richness from the bed of the river. With the chimes, and borne on the sunbeams, which cheerfully plunged into the stream, and rose again radiant from the crystal flood, came a sweet, familiar voice to thrill the heart of the listening mother.
"Jesus lives, and I in Him:
Where is thy victory, O grave?
Jesus lives to set me free,
My captive soul His love will save;
Jesus will lead me to the light,
This the sure hope that cheers my night."
So sang her child's clear voice in the words of the hymn which she herself had once taught her, and which the little one used to sing on Easter morning. The child's soul was still imprisoned, but now, on the day of Christ's resurrection, when the bell began to ring as the first sunbeam touched it, she felt a strange, sweet joy, that made her feel inclined to join her voice with its mellow chimes.
On the great Christian festivals all bells that have sunk in rivers or lakes awake to join in the hymn of all creation, and when, among the rest, the little girl's bell began to sound, her grief and longing generally awoke afresh. But to-day with the first note her sadness suddenly vanished, and a strange joy sprang up in her heart. She folded her delicate hands, and sang the verse of her childhood. But the metal did not send the sound back to her as on other days; it pierced through the walls, and floated through the waves up to the ear and heart of her sorrowing mother.