"Wait a moment longer," said she, "not in the light shall you see where the locket is hidden." A pause ensued, and Blanden perceived that her laced bodice became looser. Soon the dreary ray of a tallow candle, whose wick was but meagrely fed by some guttered masses of fatty substance, lighted the tiny room in which by the window alone Blanden could find one spot on which to stand uprightly beneath the sloping roof. That attic with the moss overgrown beams was a melancholy sight; the melting snow penetrated the badly closing windows, into the wood were nails driven, on which some clothes and a fishing net hung. The bed was most peculiar, of a shape resembling a boat, the coarse straw mattress seemed to be bedded in a skiff. And in the midst of these poverty-stricken surroundings stood the sea-maiden banished into the country, with dripping hair, her bosom half bared, and gazing at her guest with her protruding eyes, while she held the locket in one hand. "The paper--the paper," cried Blanden impatiently. "I have carried it about with me, always upon my heart, have squeezed the lines into this locket. I was searched before the authorities at the institution--nothing was found! Ha, ha, it was too well taken care of." And at the same time she commenced to dance about like a wild woman, holding the locket high in the air. She appeared like one of the Nikobar island girls, who once, when upon his voyage round the world he had been cast upon their shore, surrounded him in such dizzy tumult. He was fain to confess that Kätchen was no longer the half-witted seal of former days, that a remarkable transformation had taken place, but that her mind, far from having found its proper balance, had now passed from moody absorption into a wandering will-o'-the-wisp-like frenzy. "And why did you not show this paper to the judges? Its contents are still unknown to me, but I surmise that it might have spared you the long confinement and detention in the institution." "To be sure; oh, to be sure! I should have been free as the sea-gull in the air; I only needed to press this. Snap! the case would fly open, and they would all have known what they wished. They pressed all around it, too, but the good spring did not move; they believed at last that it was merely a senseless amber ornament and gave it back to me." "And you preferred to be tortured and locked up?" "Of course; it was not intended for the judges. Oh, the clever people--judges and doctors! How they exerted themselves; how they thought, and consulted and questioned! And what faces they made over it--it was enough to kill one with laughing! Ha-ha! half-witted Kätchen outwitted them all." "And who gave you this locket?" "The man down below, who was so liberal to-day; he dispenses good and evil. Once I brought him safely to shore through a storm that had suddenly arisen, and he rewarded me with this." "And for whom are these lines destined!"