Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER II Black Jane's Cottage. " TV7ATER! only water! " sounded a voice behind VV them. "Tears, which dry as quickly as the velvet of the mantle! Love, which perishes with the withering of the tender leaves! Youth, which forgets its long future for the throbbing pulses of a momentary passion!" The two young people separated, surprised and embarrassed, and striving to hide their tears. Behind them stood an old woman of strange aspect; a faded black head-cloth covered her grey hair and a part of her wrinkled, withered face; a black jacket, equally faded, fitted tightly to a skirt of the same color, and served to heighten the unusual pallor of her features and the transparency of her shrivelled hands. In spite of the poorness of her dress, no holes or tatters could be seen; a certain nicety, an unmistakable cleanliness and orderliness, showed clearly that, with all her poverty, the old woman cherished the memory of better days. Black Jane, as she was usually called on account of the uniform color of her dress, was only the poor widow of a discharged soldier, who had moved here a few years before, and obtained from the rich Count of Maj- niemi the little holm, with its cottage, as a homestead. Nobody could say anything discreditable of her. She lived mainly by what she received from the castle; gaining a little extra income by telling fortunes, restoring stolen goods, and the like. But the superstitious did not fail to regard the old woman with distrust on account of these little arts, especially as she was a German by birth, and, as was generally believed, a Catholic inreligion. It was whispered that her husband, a soldier in the Thirty Years' War, had participated in bloody deedsthat he had buried a plundered treasure, that Jane knew of it, and, in remorse, devoted her ...
