I am at home, and I will go to my mother's grave.
The town is not yet awake. While I wander through its empty streets it seems to me as if I had come to surprise it, and I give resounding greetings to every well-known thing I meet. Fancy! there still hangs the heavy rope along the church-tower, which was the old town's simple fire-alarm. The person who discovered a fire pulled the rope to ring the church-bell. Amongst us children it was said that the fortunate person who in this way announced a fire was paid a shining silver-piece. How busily, but alas, how vainly, did I watch on my walks for signs of flames. I never gained the silver daler! I wonder if the old rope still does service, or merely hangs there as a forgotten remnant of forgotten days.
I stand still and look down the sloping side-street. It was there in the protruding corner-house that we lived during the years of the war. I was only a few years old at the time, yet the events of those days stamped their indelible impression on my mind. The German soldiers quartered on us, who quarrelled with mother about the Danish food, the jolly white-bearded Major Bow-wow, who fell in love with us children, but whom I would not kiss on any account because he was a German. But above all I remembered this scene: mother and my half-grown up sisters, with several little girls, are sitting ravelling lint, when suddenly from
