locks. They perched themselves upon the deserted, dead, lonely ship,
that lay high up on the beach; and they cried and lamented, with their
hoarse voices, about the wood that was gone, the many precious birds'
nests that were laid waste, the old ones rendered homeless, the little
ones rendered homeless; and all for the sake of a great lumbering
thing, a gigantic vessel, that never was to float upon the deep.

"I whirled the snow in the snow storms, and raised the snow-drifts.
The snow lay like a sea high around the vessel. I let it hear my
voice, and know what a tempest can say. I knew if I exerted myself it
would get some of the knowledge other ships have.

"And winter passed--winter and summer; they come and go as I come and
go; the snow melts, the apple blossom blooms, the leaves fall--all is
change, change, and with mankind among the rest.

"But the daughters were still young--little Ide a rose, beautiful to
look at, as the shipbuilder had seen her. Often did I play with her
long brown hair, when, under the apple tree in the garden, she was
standing lost in thought, and did not observe that I was showering
down the blossoms upon her head. Then she would start, and gaze at the
red sun, and the golden clouds around it, through the space among the
dark foliage of the trees.

"Her sister Johanne resembled a lily--fair, slender, and erect; and,
like her mother, she was stately and haughty. It was a great pleasure
to her to wander up and down the grand saloon where hung the portraits
of her ancestors. The high-born dames were painted in silks and
velvets, with little hats looped up with pearls on their braided
locks--they were beautiful ladies. Their lords were depicted in steel
armour, or in costly mantles trimmed with squirrels' fur, and wearing
blue ruffs; the sword was buckled round the thigh, and not round the
loins. Johanne's own portrait would hang at some future day on that
wall, and what would her noble husband be like? Yes, she thought of
this, and she said this in low accents to herself. I heard her when I
rushed through the long corridor into the saloon, and out again.

"Anna Dorthea, the pale hyacinth, who was only fourteen years of age,
was quiet and thoughtful. Her large swimming blue eyes looked somewhat
pensive, but a childish smile played around her mouth, and I could
not blow it off; nor did I wish to do so.

"I met her in the garden, in the ravine, in the fields. She was
gathering plants and flow