hat
with such calmness as amazed every one. Her noble, beautifully
formed countenance seemed bloodless; her dark-blue eyes beamed with a
brilliancy which seemed like that of delirium; her beauty, her calmness,
and yet this obduracy in crime, produced an extraordinary impression
upon the spectators.

She was sentenced to the House of Correction in Odense. Despised and
repulsed by the better class of her fellow-beings, she went to her
punishment. No one had dreamed that under so fair a form so corrupt a
soul could have been found. She was set to the spinning-wheel; silent
and introverted, she accomplished the tasks that were assigned her. In
the coarse merriment of the other prisoners she took no part.

"Don't let your heart sink within you, Johanne Marie," said German
Heinrich, who sat at the loom; "sing with us till the iron bars rattle!"

"Johanne, you brought your old father to the grave," said her relation,
the head-cook; "how could you have taken such bad courses?"

Johanne Marie was silent; the large, dark eyes looked straight before
her, whilst she kept turning the wheel.

Five months went on, and then she became ill--ill to death, and
gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl--two beautiful and well-formed
children, excepting that the girl was as small and delicate as if its
life hung on a thread.

The dying mother kissed the little ones and wept; it was the first time
that the people within the prison had seen her weep. Her relation the
cook sat alone with her upon the bed.

"Withdraw not your hand from the innocent children," said Johanne Marie;
"if they live to grow up, tell them some time that their mother was
innocent. My eternal Saviour knows that I have never stolen! Innocent
am I, and innocent was I when I went out a spectacle of public derision,
and now when I sit here!"

"Ih, Jesus though! What do you say?" exclaimed the woman.

"The truth!" answered the dying one. "God be gracious to me!--my
children!"

She sank back upon the couch, and was dead.

CHAPTER XLIV

"Ah! wonderfully beautiful is God's earth, and worthy it is
to live contented."--HOeLTY.

We now return to the hall in Funen, to the family which we left there;
but autumn and winter are gone whilst we have been lingering on the
past. Otto and Wilhelm have been two months away. It is the autumn of
1832.

The marriage of the Kammerjunker and Sophie was deferred, according to
her wish, until the second of April, becaus