a shudder. She had seen Black Esther's head rising out of
the darkness, had again heard her dying shriek, had beheld the distorted
face and the wild black tresses.--Her hair stood on end. Her thoughts
carried her to the bottom of the lake, where she now lay dead. She
opened the window and inhaled the soft, balmy air. She sat by the open
casement for a long while, and suddenly heard some one laughing in the
room above her.

"Ha! ha! I won't do you the favor! I won't die! I won't die! Pooh, pooh!
I'll live till I'm a hundred years old, and then I'll get a new lease
of life."

It was the old pensioner. After a while he continued:--

"I'm not so stupid; I know that it's night now, and the freeholder and
his wife are come. I'll give them lots of trouble. I'm Jochem. Jochem's
my name, and what the people don't like, I do for spite. Ha! ha! I don't
use any light, and they must make me an allowance for that. I'll insist
on it, if I have to go to the King himself about it."

Irma started when she heard the King mentioned.

"Yes, I'll go to the King, to the King! to the King!" cried the old man
overhead, as if he knew that the word tortured Irma.

She heard him close the window and move a chair. The old man went to
bed.

Irma looked out into the dark night. Not a star was to be seen. There
was no light anywhere; nothing was heard but the roaring of the mountain
stream and the rustling of the trees. The night seemed like a
dark abyss.

"Are you still awake?" asked a soft voice without. It was the
grandmother.

"I was once a servant at this farm," said she. "That was forty years
ago; and now I'm the mother of the freeholder's wife, and almost the
head one on the farm. But I keep thinking of you all the time. I keep
trying to think how it is in your heart. I've something to tell you.
Come out again. I'll take you where it'll do you good to be. Come!"

Irma went out into the dark night with the old woman. How different this
guide from the one she had had the day before!

The old woman led her to the fountain. She had brought a cup with her
and gave it to Irma. "Come, drink; good cold water's the best. Water
comforts the body; it cools and quiets us; it's like bathing one's soul.
I know what sorrow is too. One's insides burn as if they were afire."

Irma drank some of the water of the mountain spring. It seemed like a
healing dew, whose influence was diffused through her whole frame.

The grandmother led her back to he