s aloft; it gleamed like gold; and from
his lips dropped pious prayers. Beautiful Helga joined in the hymns he
sang, like a child joining in its mother's song. She swung the censer,
and a wondrous fragrance of incense streamed forth thence, so that the
reeds and grass of the moor burst forth into blossom. Every germ came
forth from the deep ground. All that had life lifted itself up. A veil
of water-lilies spread itself forth like a carpet of wrought flowers,
and upon this carpet lay a sleeping woman, young and beautiful. Helga
thought it was her own likeness she saw upon the mirror of the calm
waters. But it was her mother whom she beheld, the moor king's wife,
the princess from the banks of the Nile.

The dead priest commanded that the slumbering woman should be lifted
upon the horse; but the horse sank under the burden, as though its
body had been a cloth fluttering in the wind. But the holy sign gave
strength to the airy phantom, and then the three rode from the moor to
the firm land.

[Illustration: HELGA MEETS WITH HER MOTHER IN THE MARSH.]

Then the cock crowed in the Viking's castle, and the phantom shapes
dissolved and floated away in air; but mother and daughter stood
opposite each other.

"Am I really looking at my own image from beneath the deep waters?"
asked the mother.

"Is it myself that I see reflected on the clear mirror?" exclaimed the
daughter.

And they approached one another, and embraced. The heart of the mother
beat quickest, and she understood the quickening pulses.

"My child! thou flower of my own heart! my lotos-flower of the deep
waters!"

And she embraced her child anew, and wept; and the tears were as a new
baptism of life and love to Helga.

"In the swan's plumage came I hither," said the mother; "and here also I
threw off my dress of feathers. I sank through the shaking moorland, far
down into the black slime, which closed like a wall around me. But soon I
felt a fresher stream; a power drew me down, deeper and ever deeper. I felt
the weight of sleep upon my eyelids; I slumbered, and dreams hovered round
me. It seemed to me that I was again in the pyramid in Egypt, and yet the
waving willow trunk that had frightened me up in the moor was ever before
me. I looked at the clefts and wrinkles in the stem, and they shone forth
in colours, and took the form of hieroglyphics: it was the case of the
mummy at which I was gazing; at last the case burst, and forth stepped the
thousand-y