on
it to the solid ground.

Then crowed the cock at the Viking's castle, and the apparitions
seemed to disappear in a mist, which was wafted away by the wind; but
the mother and daughter stood together.

"Is that myself I behold in the deep water?" exclaimed the mother.

"Is that myself I see on the shining surface?" said the daughter.

And they approached each other till form met form in a warm embrace,
and wildly the mother's heart beat when she perceived the truth.

"My child! my heart's own flower! my lotus from the watery deep!"

And she encircled her daughter with her arm, and wept Her tears
caused a new sensation to Helga--they were the baptism of love for
her.

"I came hither in the magic disguise of a swan, and I threw it off,"
said the mother. "I sank through the swaying mire deep into the mud of
the morass, which like a wall closed around me; but soon I perceived
that I was in a fresher stream--some power drew me deeper and still
deeper down. I felt my eyelids heavy with sleep--I slumbered and I
dreamed. I thought that I was again in the interior of the Egyptian
pyramid, but before me still stood the heaving alder trunk that had so
terrified me on the surface of the morass. I saw the cracks in the
bark, and they changed their appearance, and became hieroglyphics. It
was the mummy's coffin I was looking at; it burst open, and out issued
from it the monarch of a thousand years ago--the mummy form, black as
pitch, dark and shining as a wood-snail, or as that thick slimy mud.
It was the mud-king, or the mummy of the pyramids; I knew not which.
He threw his arms around me, and I felt as if I were dying. I only
felt that I was alive again when I found something warm on my breast,
and there a little bird was flapping with its wings, twittering and
singing. It flew from my breast high up in the dark, heavy space; but
a long green string bound it still to me. I heard and I comprehended
its tones and its longing: "Freedom! Sunshine! To the father!" Then I
thought of my father in my distant home, that dear sunny land--my
life, my affection--and I loosened the cord, and let it flutter away
home to my father. Since that hour I have not dreamed. I have slept a
long, dark, heavy sleep until now, when the strange sounds and perfume
awoke me and set me free."

That green tie between the mother's heart and the bird's wings, where
now did it flutter? what now had become of it? The stork alone had
seen it. The cord was