up in that small
place. It was as if I were in a grave. So I screamed, and banged on the
lid, and kicked. Then I listened again. Not a sound was to be heard.

It was hot as fire in the meal chest. My face burned. How I screamed!

"Help me! I'm in the meal chest! help! oh, help!"

No, not a sound. What in the world would happen to me? I could scarcely
get my breath--no--I knew I couldn't breathe any more. Yet again I
shrieked. I cannot understand why nobody heard me. My breathing was
short and difficult. No, I could not hold out--I surely could not
breathe any more.

"Oh, Mother! Mother! Help me!"

Then I heard some one in the court and then footsteps in the brewery. I
screamed again. Some one opened the door to the wine cellar and I heard
Maren's voice.

"What's that? What's that?"

"Maren, oh, Maren!" I called from the meal chest. Like a flash the door
was shut again and I heard Maren running as fast as her legs could carry
her up the kitchen stairs.

To think that she should run away without helping me! That seemed too
sad and dreadful, when I was in such distress, and I cried and sobbed as
hard as I could. And now I could scarcely get my breath again.

"Oh! oh! help, help!"

I could not scream any more, I was so strangely weak. Then I heard many
feet in the kitchen above my head. They came nearer, and down the
stairs, and then the door was opened. All I could do now was to call
very faintly.

"Oh! Mother, Mother!"

At the same instant the lid of the meal chest was quickly thrown open.
There stood Mother and Maren and Ingeborg, the cook. Mother lifted me
out; I was crying so hard I could not say a word, nor explain at all
how it happened. However, a little while after I was as lively as ever.

"Oh, you ugly Maren--who wouldn't help me!"

"I thought it was a shriek from the underworld!" said Maren. "And I was
so frightened! It clutched my heart. Oh! I shall never get over it."
Maren sat on the corner of the potato bin and wept aloud.

Mother didn't know whether to scold Maren or to laugh at her. She
behaved exactly as if it were she and not I who had been shut up in the
meal chest.

Maren took surely a hundred Hofmann's drops and still she was poorly,
and for many days she whimpered and whined about her fright at the meal
chest. And even yet she cannot hear any mention of meal, or of a chest
or of screaming, without her invariably saying:

"Yes, it's a wonder that I didn't get my death that time y