"
The six took the oath, and went away quite melancholy, and John buried
his toad deep in the ground. The little people laboured hard according
to his bidding. At midnight everything was out of the hill, and John
and Elizabeth got into the silver tun and were drawn up.
It was then one o'clock, and midsummer-eve, the very time that twelve
years before John had gone down into the hill. Music sounded around
them, and they saw the glass hill open, and the rays of the light of
heaven shine on them for the first time after so many years; and when
they got out they saw the streaks of dawn already in the east. Crowds
of the underground people were around them busied about the waggons.
John bade them a last farewell, waved his brown cap three times in the
air, and then flung it among them. And at the same moment he ceased to
see them; he beheld nothing but a green hill, and the well-known
bushes and fields, and heard the church-clock of Rambin strike two.
When all was still, save a few larks who were tuning their morning
songs, they both fell on their knees and worshipped God, resolving
henceforth to lead a pious and a Christian life.
When the sun rose, John and his Elizabeth, with the children whom they
had saved from the underground people, set out for Rambin. Every
well-known object that they saw awakened pleasing recollections; and
as they passed by Rodenkirchen, John recognised, among the people
that gazed at and followed them, his old friend Klas Starkwolt, the
cowherd, and his dog Speed.
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