At the foot of the bed crouched little Wienke and held her father's hand tightly in one of hers as he stood close by. Death was just engraving the Hippocratic face on the dying woman and the child stared breathlessly at the uncanny, incomprehensible change in the plain countenance with which she was so familiar. "What is she doing? What is it, Father?" she whispered fearfully and dug her finger nails into her father's hand. "She is dying," said the dikegrave. "Dying," repeated the child and seemed to fall into confused thought. But the old woman moved her lips once more: "Jins! Jins!" a shrill cry of distress broke from her and she stretched out her bony arms towards the reflection of the sea that glistened outside: "Help me! Help me! You are above the water. * * * God have mercy on the others!" Her arms sank, there was a slight cracking of the bedstead; she had ceased to live. The child drew a deep sigh and raised her pale eyes to her father: "Is she still dying?" she asked. "She has finished!" said the dikegrave, and took the child in his arms. "She is far away from us now, with God." "With God," repeated the child and was silent for a while as if she were thinking over the words. "Is it good to be with God?" "Yes, best of all." But in Hauke's heart the dying woman's last words tolled heavily. "God have mercy on the others!"--the words sounded softly within him. What did the old witch mean? Can the dying prophesy? Soon, after Trien' Jans had been buried up by the church, there began to be ever louder talk of all kinds of misfortune and curious vermin that were said to have frightened the people in northern Friesland. And it was certain that on the Sunday in Mid-Lent the golden cock had been thrown down from the top of the tower by a whirlwind; and it was true too that in midsummer a shower of large insects fell from heaven like snow so that it was impossible to open one's eyes and they lay nearly as high as a hand on the fens and no one had ever seen anything like it. But after the end of September when the head-man and the maid Ann Grete came back from town where they had driven with grain and butter for the market, they climbed down from their wagon with faces pale with fear. "What is it? What is the matter with you?" cried the other maids, who had come running out when they heard the sound of the wagon. Ann Grete in her traveling dress stepped breathlessly into the roomy kitchen. "Oh, hurry up and tell us!" called the girls again, "where is the misfortune?" "Oh, may our dear Jesus protect us!" cried Ann Grete. "You know from the other side, across the water, that old Molly from Siegelhof--we always stand together with our butter at the corner near the apothecary's--she told me about it and Iven Johns said too, 'that means a misfortune,' he said, 'a misfortune for the whole of northern Friesland; believe me Ann Grete!' And"--she lowered her voice--"perhaps after all it's not all right with the dikegrave's white horse."