Page:Pontoppidan - Emanuel, or Children of the Soil (1896).djvu/310

 One night he was awakened by a long-drawn wailing sound, which at first he could not explain, until he made out that it was the piping of the fire alarm. He sprang up in haste and was hurrying on a few clothes, when he heard sounds in the house; the door opened, and the lame servant appeared in a flannel petticoat, with a lighted candle in her shaking hands.

"Oh, sir!… There's a fire!" she screamed, with a pale face—like everyone else who had been through the great Veilby fire, she could never hear the fire alarm without being frightened to death.

People were running about all over the village with lanterns. It was soon discovered that it was only a cottage in the next parish which was on fire; and when the hose had been got off, sufficiently manned, the village settled down again.

This disturbance so upset Emanuel that he made a decided resolution the same night. He was determined to be married soon. He felt that he could not endure this dreary solitude during a long, dark winter. And why should he wait?—for the present, at all events, there would be no change in his position.

The very next day he spoke to Hansine about it.

At first she was a good deal alarmed. She had secretly hoped that Emanuel would not want to be married for a year at least. The