r a tree somewhere waiting for wings to be given them? If such were
the case, they would freeze to death. And I could see these two little
frozen mortals, who dared not go home, the younger one crying, the elder
one finally crying too. I positively seemed to hear them--"Hush!"

"What is that?" said Stina, and turned in sudden hope. "Do you hear
them?"

We both stood still; but there was nothing to hear except my own panting
when I could no longer hold my breath. Nor was there anything resembling
two little human beings huddled together.

I told her what I had just been thinking about, and drawing near me she
clasped her hands, and, in tones of suppressed anguish, whispered: "Pray
with me! Oh, pray with me!"

"What shall I pray for? That the boys may die, and go to heaven and
become angels?"

She stared at me in alarm, then turned and walked on as before, but now
without a word.

We followed a foot-path through the wood: it led to the fish-pond, as I
remembered from the story about little Hans; but we had to go more than
half the length of the park in order to reach the latter. Through a
ravine flowed a brook, and here a dam had been made. It was large so
that the fish-pond had a considerable circumference. We had to step up
from the foot-path in order to reach the edge of the pond. Stina
continued to walk in front of me, and when she had climbed the bank and
could see the pond and the two parents standing on it, she kneeled down,
praying and sobbing. Now I was sorry for her.

When I also stood upon the bank and saw the parents, I was deeply
affected. At the same time I heard voices in the wood behind me. They
came from the people with the lanterns. The flickering light of the four
lanterns that, subdued by the falling snow, was shed over human beings,
the snow itself, the lower trunks of the trees, and the shadows into
which some individuals in the party and some of the trees and certain
portions of the landscape occasionally fell, all became fixed forever in
my memory with the words I at that moment heard from the pond: "There is
no hole in the ice!"

It was Atlung's voice, quivering with emotion. I turned and saw his wife
on his neck. Stina had sprung up with an exclamation which ended in a
long but hushed: "God be praised and thanked!"

But the two on the ice still clung together, with some difficulty I
climbed down from the bank and crossed to where they stood; the wife
still hung on Atlung's neck and he