our store before they said their tasks; and when in my heart of little faith I sighed thereat, although I said nought, she smiled, and said, "Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself." The Holy Ghost spoke by her, as I cannot but believe, nor thou either, beloved reader: for mark what happened. In the afternoon she (I mean my child) went up the Streckelberg to seek for blackberries, as old Paasch had told her, through the maid, that a few bushes were still left. The maid was chopping wood in the yard, to which end she had borrowed old Paasch his axe, for the Imperialist thieves had thrown away mine, so that it could nowhere be found; and I myself was pacing up and down in the room, meditating my sermon; when my child, with her apron full, came quickly in at the door, quite red and with beaming eyes, and scarce able for joy to say more than "Father, father, what have I got?" "Well," quoth I, "what hast thou got, my child?" Whereupon she opened her apron, and I scarce trusted my eyes when I saw, instead of the blackberries which she had gone to seek, two shining pieces of amber, each nearly as big as a man's head, not to mention the small pieces, some of which were as large as my hand, and that, God knows, is no small one. "Child of my heart," cried I, "how camest thou by this blessing from God?" As soon as she could fetch her breath, she told me as follows:-- That while she was seeking for blackberries in a dell near the shore she saw somewhat glistening in the sun, and on coming near she found this wondrous godsend, seeing that the wind had blown the sand away from off a black vein of amber. That she straightway had broken off these pieces with a stick, and that there was plenty more to be got, seeing that it rattled about under the stick when she thrust it into the sand, neither could she force it farther than, at most, a foot deep into the ground; _item,_ she told me that she had covered the place all over again with sand, and swept it smooth with her apron, so as to leave no traces.