Page:Fairy tales from Hans Christian Andersen (Walker).djvu/154

118 it was half a century later. She lived the longest; she had gone through everything.

"Across the heath, near the town of Viborg, stood the Dean's new, handsome mansion, built of red stone, with toothed gables. The smoke curled thickly out of the chimneys. The gentle lady and her fair daughters sat in the bay window looking into the garden at the drooping thorns and out to the brown heath beyond. What were they looking at there? They were looking at a stork's nest on a tumbledown cottage; the roof was covered, as far as there was any roof to cover, with moss and house-leek; but the stork's nest made the best covering. It was the only part to which anything was done, for the stork kept it in repair.

"This house was only fit to be looked at, not to be touched. I had to mind what I was about," said the wind. "The cottage was allowed to stand for the sake of the stork's nest; in itself it was only a scarecrow on the heath, but the Dean did not want to frighten away the stork, so the hovel was allowed to stand. The poor soul inside was allowed to live in it; she had the Egyptian bird to thank for that; or was it repayment for having once pleaded for the nest of his wild black brother in Borreby Forest? Then, poor thing, she was a child, a delicate, pale hyacinth in a noble flower garden. Poor Anna Dorothea; she remembered it all! Ah, human beings can sigh as well as the wind when it soughs through the rushes and reeds.

"'Oh dear! Oh dear! No bells rang over the grave of Waldemar Daa. No schoolboys sang when the former lord of Borreby Castle was laid in his grave. Well, everything must have an end, even misery! Sister Ida became the wife of a peasant, and this was her father's sorest trial. His daughter's husband a miserable serf, who might at any moment be ordered the punishment of the wooden horse by his lord. It is well that the sod covers him now, and you, too, Ida! Ah yes! ah yes! Poor me, poor me! I still linger on. In Thy mercy release me, O Christ!'