Part 125 (1/2)

”You're still too heavily laden?” said the grandmother.

”How so?”

”If a wagon's loaded too heavily, you can't grease its wheels so as to stop their creaking. You must wait till it's empty. Then you can raise it with a jack-screw, take off the wheels and grease the axles. The burden you still bear is the thoughts of the past; lay them aside, and you'll soon feel relieved.”

At last I know why I get up in the mornings. Something seems to say to me: ”Thou shalt labor. To-day, this will be finished; to-morrow, that.”

And when I lie down to rest, there is always something more in the world than there was at daybreak.

”Work!” ”Work!” is the daily, hourly watchword here. They think of nothing but work. It is a necessity of their being, just as growth is to the tree. It is this that makes them so self-reliant.

There is misery and discord, even here.

In the kindness of her heart, Walpurga said that she could not endure the thought of the old blind pensioner's being obliged to eat his meals alone, and that she meant to have him at the table with the rest.

”I won't have it!” said Hansei. ”Not a word more about it; I won't have it.”

”Why not?”

”Why? You ought to know that yourself. If Jochem has once been at the table, you can never get rid of him again. So we'd better not have him at all. You don't know how an old blind man eats.”

After that, not a word was spoken during the meal. Walpurga made believe that she was eating, but she was merely choking down her tears, and left the table soon afterward. She is keenly sensitive to such rudeness and cruelty; but she never complains, not even to me.

(During a violent storm.)

What a fright I have had to-day! My little pitchman told me that a man had hanged himself somewhere in the vicinity.

”It had to come,” thought he. ”The man had hanged himself fifteen years ago, but they cut him down, and he lived on. But it was just as if he always had a rope around his neck--people who've once tried anything of that sort, never die a natural death.”

How his words startled me.

Can it be that such dread fate is yet in store for me?

I answer: No! It shall not be!

To sit in my warm room and look out at the driving snowstorm, is like going back in thought to the hurly-burly of the great world.

Nine weeks have pa.s.sed already.