ood the quickened
pulses. "My child!" she exclaimed, "the flower of my heart--my lotus
flower of the deep water!" and she embraced her child again and
wept, and the tears were as a baptism of new life and love for
Helga. "In swan's plumage I came here," said the mother, "and here I
threw off my feather dress. Then I sank down through the wavering
ground, deep into the marsh beneath, which closed like a wall around
me; I found myself after a while in fresher water; still a power
drew me down deeper and deeper. I felt the weight of sleep upon my
eyelids. Then I slept, and dreams hovered round me. It seemed to me as
if I were again in the pyramids of Egypt, and yet the waving elder
trunk that had frightened me on the moor stood ever before me. I
observed the clefts and wrinkles in the stem; they shone forth in
strange colors, and took the form of hieroglyphics. It was the mummy
case on which I gazed. At last it burst, and forth stepped the
thousand years' old king, the mummy form, black as pitch, black as the
shining wood-snail, or the slimy mud of the swamp. Whether it was
really the mummy or the Marsh King I know not. He seized me in his
arms, and I felt as if I must die. When I recovered myself, I found in
my bosom a little bird, flapping its wings, twittering and fluttering.
The bird flew away from my bosom, upwards towards the dark, heavy
canopy above me, but a long, green band kept it fastened to me. I
heard and understood the tenor of its longings. Freedom! sunlight!
to my father! Then I thought of my father, and the sunny land of my
birth, my life, and my love. Then I loosened the band, and let the
bird fly away to its home--to a father. Since that hour I have
ceased to dream; my sleep has been long and heavy, till in this very
hour, harmony and fragrance awoke me, and set me free."

The green band which fastened the wings of the bird to the
mother's heart, where did it flutter now? whither had it been
wafted? The stork only had seen it. The band was the green stalk,
the cup of the flower the cradle in which lay the child, that now in
blooming beauty had been folded to the mother's heart.

And while the two were resting in each other's arms, the old stork
flew round and round them in narrowing circles, till at length he flew
away swiftly to his nest, and fetched away the two suits of swan's
feathers, which he had preserved there for many years. Then he
returned to the mother and daughter, and threw the swan's plu