From out my corner I listened to the stories and songs, and if they became creepy and my little soul began to be moved with terror, I shoved the stool nearer to my mother and covertly held on by her dress; and could not possibly understand how the others still dared to laugh at me, or at the terrible stories. At last when bedtime came, and my mother pulled my little box-bed out for me, I simply could not go to bed alone, and my grandmother must lie beside me until the frightful visions had faded and I fell asleep. But with us the long Advent nights were always short. Soon after two o'clock, the house began to grow restless. In the attics above one could hear the farm-lads dressing and moving about, and in the kitchen the maids broke up kindling wood and poked the fire. Then they all went out to the threshing floor to thresh. My mother was also up and about, and had kindled a light in the living-room; soon after that my father rose, and they both put on somewhat better clothes than they wore on working-days and yet not their Sunday best. Then mother said a few words to grandmother, who still lay a-bed, and when I, wakened by the stir, made some sort of remark, she only answered, "You lie nice and quiet and go to sleep again!" Then my parents lighted a lantern, extinguished the light in the room, and left the house. I heard the outer door close, and saw the gleam of light go glimmering past the window, and I heard the crunching of footsteps in the snow and the rattling of the house-dog's chain. Then, save for the regular throb of the threshers at work, all was once more quiet and I fell asleep again. My father and mother were going to the Rorate[3] at the parish church, nearly three hours away. I followed them in my dream. I could hear the church bell, and the sound of the organ and the Advent song, "Hail Mary, thou bright morning star!" I saw, too, the lights on the high altar; and the little angels that stood above it spread out their golden wings and flew about the church, and the one with the trumpet, standing over the pulpit, passed out over the heath and into the forests and blew throughout the whole world that the coming of the Saviour was near at hand. When I awoke the sun had long been shining into the windows; outside the snow glittered and shimmered, and indoors my mother went about again in workaday clothes and did her household tasks. Grandmother's bed, next mine, was already made, and she herself now came in from the kitchen and helped me to put on my breeches, and washed my face with cold water, that stung me so that I was ready to laugh and cry at the same moment. That over I knelt on my stool and prayed with grandmother the morning prayer: In Gottes Namen aufstehen Gegen Gott gehen, Gegen Gott treten, Zum Himmlischen Vater beten, Dass er uns verleih Lieb Engelein drei: