n arose, and young Helga stood
again in all her beauty, with bloody hands, and, for the first time,
with tears on her blooming cheeks.

During this change it seemed as if two natures were wrestling within
her; she trembled, looked around her as if awakening from a painful
dream, then seized upon the slender branch of a tree near, and held
fast by it as if for support; and in another moment she climbed like a
cat up to the top of the tree, and placed herself firmly there. For a
whole long day she sat there like a frightened squirrel in the deep
loneliness of the forest, where all is still and dead, people say.
Dead! There flew by butterflies chasing each other either in sport or
in strife. There were ant-hills near, each covered with hundreds of
little busy labourers, passing in swarms to and fro. In the air danced
innumerable gnats; crowds of buzzing flies swept past; lady-birds,
dragon-flies, and other winged insects floated hither and thither;
earth-worms crept forth from the damp ground; moles crawled about;
otherwise it was still--_dead_, as people say and think.

None remarked Helga, except the jays that flew screeching to the top
of the tree where she sat; they hopped on the branches around her with
impudent curiosity, but there was something in the glance of her eye
that speedily drove them away; they were none the wiser about her,
nor, indeed, was she about herself. When the evening approached, and
the sun began to sink, the transformation time rendered a change of
position necessary. She slipped down from the tree, and, as the last
ray of the sun faded away, she was again the shrivelled frog, with the
webbed-fingered hands; but her eyes beamed now with a charming
expression, which they had not worn in the beautiful form; they were
the mildest, sweetest girlish eyes that glanced from behind the mask
of a frog--they bore witness to the deeply-thinking human mind, the
deeply-feeling human heart; and these lovely eyes burst into
tears--tears of unfeigned sorrow.

Close to the lately raised grave lay the cross of green boughs that
had been tied together--the last work of him who was now dead and
gone. Helga took it up, and the thought presented itself to her that
it would be well to place it amidst the stones, above him and the
slaughtered horse. With the sad remembrances thus awakened, her tears
flowed faster; and in the fulness of her heart she scratched the same
sign in the earth round the grave--it would be a