For a time Amrei, in a
dreamy, forgetful way, stood gazing at the lights on the heads of the
graves, watching the flame consume the wax and the wick grow blacker,
and blacker, until at last the light was quite burnt out.

In the crowd a man, wearing handsome, town-made clothes and with a
ribbon in his button-hole, was moving about here and there. It was the
High Commissioner of Public Works, Severin, who, on a trip of
inspection, had come to visit the graves of his parents, Brosi and Moni.
His brothers and sisters and other relatives were constantly crowding
around him with a kind of deferential respect; in fact, the usual
reverence of the occasion was almost entirely diverted, nearly all the
attention being fixed upon this stranger. Amrei also looked at him, and
asked Crappy Zachy:

"Is that a bridegroom?"

"Why?"

"Because he has a ribbon in his button-hole."

Instead of answering her, the first thing that Crappy Zachy did was to
go up to a group of people and tell them what a stupid speech the child
had made; and from among the graves there arose a loud laugh over her
foolishness. Only Farmer Rodel's wife said: "I don't see anything
foolish in that. Although it is a mark of honor that Severin has, it is
after all a strange thing for him to go about in the churchyard with
such a decoration on--in the place where we see what we are all coming
to, whether in our lifetime we have worn clothes of silk or of homespun.
It annoyed me to see him wear it in the church--a thing of that kind
ought to be taken off when one goes to church, and more especially in
the churchyard!"

The rumor of little Amrei's question must have penetrated to Severin
himself, for he was seen to button his overcoat hastily, and as he did
so he nodded at the child. Now he was heard to ask who she was, and as
soon as he found out, he came hurrying across to the children beside the
fresh graves, and said to Amrei:

"Come here, my child. Open your hand. Here is a ducat for you--buy what
you want with it."

The child stared at him and did not answer. But scarcely had Severin
turned his back when she called out to him, half-aloud:

"I won't take any presents!"--and she flung the ducat after him.

Several people who had seen this came up to Amrei and scolded her; and
just as they were about to illuse her, she was again saved from their
rough hands by Farmer Rodel's wife, who once before had protected her
with words. But even she requested Amrei