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One day--shall I ever forget it! when Thelma
was about two and a half years old, I missed them both, and went out to
search for them, fearing my wife had lost her way, and knowing that our
child could not toddle far without fatigue. I found them"--the _bonde_
shuddered-"but how? My wife had slipped and fallen through a chasm in
the rocks,--high enough, indeed, to have killed her,--she was alive, but
injured for life. She lay there white and motionless--little Thelma
meanwhile sat smilingly on the edge of the rock, assuring me that her
mother had gone to sleep '_down there_.' Well!" and Gueldmar brushed the
back of his hand across his eyes, "to make a long story short, I carried
my darling home in my arms a wreck--she lingered for ten years of
patient suffering, ten long years! She could only move about on
crutches,--the beauty of her figure was gone--but the beauty of her face
grew more perfect every day! Never again was she seen on the hills,--and
so to the silly folks of Bosekop she seemed to have disappeared.


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