Page:Fairy tales from Hans Christian Andersen (Walker).djvu/226

188 Saviour hanging bleeding on the cross at the roadside. These are old pictures to the new generation, but I saw their origin. There is a solitary convent perched upon the mountain-side like a swallow's nest. Two of the sisters were standing up in the tower ringing the bell; they were both young, so their glances roamed over the mountains into the wide world beyond. A travelling carriage drove along the high road; the post horn sounded gaily and the poor nuns fixed their eyes, filled with the same thoughts, upon the carriage; a tear stood in those of the youngest. The sound of the horn grew fainter and fainter till its dying notes were drowned by the convent bell."

TWENTY-FOURTH EVENING

Hear what the moon told me.

"Several years ago I was in Copenhagen; I peeped in at the window of a poor little room. The father and mother were both asleep, but their little son was awake. I saw the flowered chintz curtains stirring and the child peeped out. I thought at first that he was looking at the grandfather's clock from Bornholm. It was gaily painted in red and green, and a cuckoo sat at the top; it had heavy leaden weights and the pendulum, with its shining brass disc, swung backward and forward. 'Tick, tack'; but that was not what he was looking at. No, it was his mother's spinning-wheel which stood under the clock. It was the boy's dearest treasure in all the house, but he dared not touch it or he would be rapped over the knuckles. He would stand for hours, while his mother was spinning, looking at the whirling spindle, and the whizzing wheel, and he had his own thoughts about them. Oh, if only he dared spin with that wheel; father and mother were asleep; he looked at them, he looked at the wheel, and soon he put one bare little foot out of bed, and then another little bare foot followed by two little legs, bump, there he stood upon the floor. He turned round once more to see if father and mother were