thank you for your neighborliness all these years. And if you meet
Johanna over there,' she said, 'give her my love. Things have gone
terribly badly with her, from what I've heard; but give her my love,
all the same. Johanna child, little child! She was nearest her
mother's heart, and so she happened to tread upon it. Perhaps it
was our fault. You'll give her her mother's love, won't you, Lasse?'
Those were her very words, and now she's most likely dead, so poorly
as she was then."

Johanna Pihl had no command over her feelings. It was evident that
she was not accustomed to weep, for her sobs seemed to tear her
to pieces. No tears came, but her agony was like the throes of
child-birth. "Little mother! Poor little mother!" she said every now
and again, as she sat rocking herself upon the edge of the manger.

"There, there, there!" said Lasse, patting her on the head. "I told
them they had been too hard with you. But what did you want to creep
through that window for--a child of sixteen and in the middle of
the night? You can hardly wonder that they forgot themselves a
little, all the more that he was earning no wages beyond his keep
and clothes, and was a bad fellow at that, who was always losing
his place."

"I was fond of him," said Johanna, weeping. "He's the only one I've
ever cared for. And I was so stupid that I thought he was fond of
me too, though he'd never seen me."

"Ah, yes; you were only a child! I said so to your parents. But
that you could think of doing anything so indecent!"