II.

The second morning of September opened dark and uncomfortable enough. The rain fell in torrents; at seven o’clock it was still too dark to see without a candle. Kaspar went out and attended to his cattle, and when he brought in the milk said to his wife,--

“Frantz Schwartz was on top of the mountain yesterday; he says that the little crack up there has so widened that he cannot now jump across it.”

“Is there any danger, think you?” anxiously asked the wife, setting the wooden pail on the floor and looking up at him.

“No, no,” answered Kaspar carelessly, shaking the water from his cap, “if there should be a split-off, it won’t get any further than the trees; they’ll hold it, never fear,” and turning from her he went off to his work, whistling merrily.

But Frau Bernstein did not feel so sure, and many times during the morning she opened the door and looked long and anxiously toward the top of the towering mountain.

“I know not what makes me feel so afraid,” she said to Franziska, who was holding and amusing baby Fritz, “yet I cannot help it; even the trees seem to be worried about something, the leaves all hang their heads so.”

“What nonsense,” laughed Kaspar, coming in just in time to catch her last words; “the leaves are soaked through and through with water, and are too heavy to hold their heads up.”

But there was work to do, and, in spite of anxiety, the morning hours passed quickly.

About dinner-time the rain stopped falling, but the black, angry clouds settled down more heavily over meadow and town, and after a few moments of quiet a gust of ice-cold wind swept down the mountain sides, followed by a furious, though short, storm of hail.

The afternoon wore away with no return of the storm, and the hearts of all grew lighter.

“Now God be thanked that it no more rains and the danger is over,” said the mother.

About five o’clock Kaspar looked in and said, “Josepha, come out and see what the hail has done; the trees no more bear leaves but ribbons on their branches; the vines are stripped, and nothing is left in the garden.”

Baby Fritz was asleep in his cradle, Gretchen busy with her play, and leaving Franziska to care for them, Frau Bernstein, followed by Heinrich, passed out through the kitchen leaving the door open,--

“It will be good for the house that the air enter; the rain has made it so damp,” said she.

Franziska watched them until Gretchen called,--“Freddie! Freddie! come see the funny little birds.”

Franziska hurried to the window, then opened the front door, and stood upon the steps, Gretchen close beside her.

[Illustration]

How strangely the birds acted, to be sure. They flew round and round in the air, all the time uttering a plaintive little cry: the cattle, too, showed great uneasiness, and began to run about the meadows lowing as they ran. What could it all mean? Kaspar and his wife asked the same question, and, as if in answer, a huge boulder left the mountain top and crashed into the trees. It fell no further; the trees held it; but when three or four others rolled down together, that was more than the trees could stand; they bent and broke and the huge rocks came rolling down the mountain side into the village below. Kaspar looked at the mountain and saw the trees tottering and falling, and the ground all in motion, and seizing Heinrich with one hand and his wife with the other, he shouted, “A land slide! run! run!!”

Now, in times of great excitement, a father may forget his children for a moment, but a mother never; so tearing herself from her husband’s grasp with the words, “Gretchen! Fritz!” Frau Bernstein ran toward the house as fast as she could run, not minding in the least that she was in the track of the falling stones. As she reached the door, she caught Gretchen up in her arms, and rushed into the room where baby Fritz lay sleeping. Handing Gretchen to Franziska, who had followed her, it was the work of a moment only to lift the baby from his cradle, but as Franziska turned to leave the room she saw, with horror-stricken eyes, what seemed to be the whole mountain side coming through the back door. One step only when a crashing, splintering, grinding noise filled her ears; and then all became a blank. When she came to herself, she was in the dark; so dark it was she could not see at all, but worse than that, she was buried to her shoulders in wet earth and stones, and the blood was running down her face from a sharp cut in her forehead.

After struggling a few moments she succeeded in freeing one of her hands, and as she wiped the blood away, the horrible truth flashed upon her--she was buried alive! Then how she struggled, and cried, and prayed, and shouted for help; but the cruel earth held her close, and there was no one to hear or answer her. “Oh, if with the rest of them I too had died!” she sobbed, when the first paroxysm of terror had spent itself,--“but to starve here is horrible! horrible!” and again she sought to free herself from the earth around her, but in vain.

A low moan, followed by sobs of fright and pain, with a piteous cry of “Mutter! Mutter!” broke upon her ear; it was little Gretchen’s voice.

At the sound, all that was noble and heroic in the girl’s nature asserted itself; her own pain and danger were forgotten; she must save Gretchen somehow, but first she must soothe and comfort her. “Gretchen! Gretchen!” she called, “where are you, dear?”

“Don’t know,” answered the little one between her sobs.

“Come here, darling, you can come to Freddie, can’t you?”

“I can’t get up,” wailed the child after a moment’s silence; “something won’t let me go.”

“Don’t cry so, darling,” said Franziska; “can you see anything?”

“Can’t see anything but a little star in the dark,” replied the plaintive little voice. At this answer, a great hope filled the heart of Franziska; the little star must be a small opening through which the fading daylight found an entrance; they were not so deeply buried as she had feared.

“Want a drink of water,” wailed the little one,--“Freddie, come and give Gretchen a drink.”

Oh, how she longed to go.

“What shall I do! oh, what shall I do!” she moaned under her breath; then with a great effort at self-control she said aloud,--“Gretchen, darling, Freddie can’t come, so fast the dirt holds her; but perhaps ‘der Vater’ will come soon, and he will give Gretchen water; only be patient, darling, and do not be afraid, Freddie is close here; now don’t cry any more and she will tell you a story; you want to hear again the story, don’t you, Gretchen, about the prince who found the real princess?”

No answer, but the sobbing grew less violent. The tears were running down her own cheeks, but she began bravely,--

“Once, upon a time, there was a prince who wished to marry a princess, but he wanted her to be a real princess. He travelled all around the world to find one; not that there was any lack of princesses, but as to whether or no they were real ones, he could not always make out; there was sure to be something about them not just satisfactory. At last he went home quite unhappy, so disappointed was he at not finding a real princess.

“One evening there was a furious storm. It thundered and lightened, and the rain poured down till it was quite dreadful. Between the thunderclaps there came a knock at the town-gate. The old king, after thinking a moment, said the gate should not be opened; no good person would be out in such bad weather; and if he were, he had no business to be. But he was a kind-hearted old king, and when it thundered and lightened and rained harder than ever, he went himself and opened it.

“A princess stood outside the gate, but,--oh dear--what a state she was in from the rain and the bad weather! The water was dripping down from her hair and her clothes, and running in at the tips of her shoes and coming out at the heels. Yet she said she was a real princess. Well, that we’ll presently see, thought the old queen, the king’s wife, but she said nothing. She opened the door into a large room. ‘Oh, my!’ said the princess, as she looked around. Except where the windows were, the walls were all covered with closets and mirrors: first a closet, and then a mirror; then a closet, then another mirror, and so on all around the room. The old queen opened a closet door. There were the prettiest little slippers the princess had ever set her eyes upon. Slippers of white satin, slippers of black satin, slippers of red satin, slippers of gold satin,--indeed there were slippers of every color under the sun.

“The princess peeped into another closet. On shelves lay piles of the softest silk stockings,--a pair of stockings for every pair of slippers. ‘Oh, my!’ again said the princess. In the other closets hung gowns of satin, and gowns of silk, and indeed there was everything a princess could have need of.

“‘Now, help yourself,’ said the old queen, and off she went to the kitchen to hurry up the dinner; for when princesses have been out in the rain they are apt to be hungry.”

“Gretchen’s hungry too,--give Gretchen some bread,” came in faint tones.

“When ‘der Vater’ comes, darling. Just hear the rest of the story.

“The princess stood a long time in thought. She could not make up her mind just what to put on. Black would be the most appropriate, she at last decided; she was not in mourning, but she was in trouble, and that was the next thing to it. So she put on the black silk stockings, the black satin slippers, and a black satin gown; then she stood in the middle of the room and looked at herself in the mirrors.

“‘Oh, my,’ said the princess, ‘how fine it is to see one’s self all around at the same time, and not have to turn first this way and then that.’

“When the princess came out of the room how lovely she did look, to be sure. Her hair curled all around her face in little rings; her eyes were blue as a bit of the sky in sunshiny weather, her hands were white as milk, and when the prince touched one of them he thought he had never felt anything softer. So delighted was he, he wished to marry her on the spot, but the old queen was not quite satisfied. ‘She looks well, and she eats well, but wait and see how she sleeps,’ said she. So she went into the chamber and took off the bedding and laid a bean upon the mattress. Then she laid twenty mattresses upon the bean, and piled twenty eider-down beds on top of the mattresses.

“The princess lay upon them the whole night. In the morning, ‘How did you sleep?’ asked the old queen.

“‘Oh, very badly,’ said the princess; ‘I scarcely closed my eyes all night! I do not know what was in the bed! I laid upon some hard thing which has made me black and blue all over. It was quite dreadful!’

“It was now evident that she was a real princess, since she perceived the bean through twenty mattresses and twenty eider-down beds. None but a princess could have such delicate feeling. So the prince married her, for he knew he had found a real princess, and they lived happy ever after.

“Now, wasn’t it nice that the prince found a real princess after all?”

No answer.

“Gretchen, can’t you hear me?” she cried.

Still no answer.

“Gretchen! Gretchen!” she called, now thoroughly frightened, “speak to Freddie!” but there was no sound save her own voice. Then despair filled the heart of poor Franziska. “Oh! she is dying! she is dead! my little Gretchen! if I could only go to her I could get her out from under the dirt and stones, so strong am I”; and she dug desperately at the earth surrounding her with her one poor hand, but how vain were all her efforts--and soon realizing this, she stopped struggling.

The long hours in their slow march seemed almost to pause beside her. How cold she was, all except her head,--that seemed on fire. How the earth pinched her; if it held her so tight long, her heart must stop beating,--how still everything was;--she had heard of the quiet of the grave, now she knew what that meant;--only she had never thought it could press down upon and hurt her so;--and the night wore itself slowly out, with now no sound save the creaking of some heavy timber as it sank prone upon the ground under its load of earth and stones.

The faint, sweet tones of the morning bell penetrated her prison, arousing her from the stupor into which she had fallen.

“Oh, I cannot die! I cannot die, when it is morning and the earth is so near! my sweet bells! how you torture me. _Heilige Maria, bitt für uns!--bitt für uns!_”

Her piteous cry pierced little Gretchen’s returning consciousness, and feebly she answered her.