At the touch, a slight shiver ran through the limbs of the dying man. His glance turned slowly away from the distant sky, and rested upon the beautiful, pale, tear-wet face before him. A happy smile gleamed over his features. "Ulrica," he whispered. The name fell from the white lips softly, almost inaudibly, and then lips and eyelids closed. Cecilia's head sank upon Gotthold's breast; the Prince, who during the whole scene had discreetly remained at a distance, turned away, and gazed steadily at the golden sunset. And the golden hues of sunset glowed upon fields and woods, and the churchyard of Rammin, in which the old man had just been laid to rest with his children and children's children. Only a small, very small company had stood around the grave when the coffin was lowered, and they had needed no priest to consecrate the place which would henceforth be sacred to them. Then Frau Wollnow embraced Cecilia, and whispered: "Don't allow yourself to be disconcerted by any narrow-minded creature you may meet," and Cecilia answered: "Have no fear, I know what I am doing." Then Ottilie kissed Gretchen; the Prince and Herr Wollnow took leave of Cecilia with a few cordial words, and the Prince's light carriage rolled towards his castle, and the Wollnow's heavy equipage along the road to Prora. At the other end of the village, where the road leads to Neuenfaehr and Sundin, stood a travelling carriage, and they now walked silently through the little hamlet, arm-in-arm; while the child ran before them, and snatched at the swallows when they came too near. Otherwise the swallows had a free course. Up and down they darted in their arrowy flight, now grazing the earth, now rising in graceful curves, anon flying in a straight line and then zigzag, chirping, twittering, and fluttering their long wings unweariedly. For them, too, it was probably the last evening, and to-morrow they would fly towards the South, and not return till spring. Gotthold thought of this, and then of the evening when he had walked through the deserted village-street, and the swallows' song brought tears of sorrow to his eyes, and how empty his home and the whole beautiful world had been to him, and how the whole beautiful world now seemed to him like home; and as he gazed into the dark eyes of his beloved wife, and pressed the little warm hand of the child, now his, he knew "what the swallow sang." FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: Dumpling.] [Footnote 2: The second person singular is used throughout this conversation, but I have thought it better to adopt the English mode of address.--Tr.] THE END. End of Project Gutenberg's What the Swallow Sang, by Friedrich Spielhagen