Vreneli looked after him in speechless amazement. The wise king was right, then; she had met but a new blow, and this one more crushing than the first. She turned, and saw behind her King Laurin, who had been an unseen witness of Tony's shameful treachery. His eyes glowed, but he uttered not a word. Vreneli stooped again to raise his hands to her trembling lips. "I am ready to follow you!" she said in a low voice.
Then the rock opened before them; Vreneli gave a farewell look at the midday sun, then, led by King Laurin's hand, she entered the magic kingdom of the dwarfs.
That very moment an avalanche was set free from the snow-clad slopes of the glacier, rolled down with angry thunder, and at the cross where once Tony had sworn faithful love to Vreneli it overtook him and his heartless bride, and buried them so deep that their bodies were never found. Thus King Laurin avenged his adopted daughter.
Vreneli had found a home, and, instead of the one worthless heart that she had lost, a thousand hearts beat true to her in unchanging love.
King Laurin loved her as he had once loved his own lost child, and she returned his affection with all the warmth of her young heart, while the little dwarfs obeyed her every wish with that cheerful eagerness with which they had once served their lost princess.
She tended the rose-garden beside the king's crystal palace with such loving care that it bloomed once more as in the days in which the magic-mighty hand of the princess had moved among its fairy blossoms, and the sweet fragrance that the roses breathed into her very soul healed every wound of disappointed love.
She did not miss the sunlight in this fairy kingdom, for the mild radiance of unseen stars lit it day and night; she never longed for earth, for here was unchanging spring; warm breezes kissed her brow, and the wild chamois, shy dwellers of the mountain solitudes, came up in friendly confidence, and let her stroke them with her snow-white hand.
Many a time on starry nights she went by King Laurin's side out to the glacier peaks, to look around upon the slumbering land. Her eye, made keen by the light of the fairy world, pierced the distance and the darkness of night, and she gazed, even unaided by any "magic ring," far beyond the boundaries which limit human vision. And what had once driven her from the region of sunlight she saw always and everywhere—sorrow, injustice, and untruth.