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Updated: September 15, 2025
The church-bell suddenly ceased its metallic clatter, and while its deep tones still throbbed through the night air, the wondering and frightened people crowded about the steps in breathless suspense. The Burgomeister raised his hand. Even in the moonlight it could be seen that he was pale. He spoke quickly. "Neighbors," he said, "there is bad news! the German army is on our borders!
Soon the church-bell was clanging joyfully from the belfry, carrying the news of the wanderers' safe return to every one within hearing distance. Bells from the adjoining village joined the clamor, and horns answering from distant crags told the glad news. The toilers on the mountain-side heard and rejoiced.
But that church-bell reminded her of the source of hope and help to which burdened hearts have been turning in all the ages, and with the vague thought that she might find some light and cheer that was not in the sunshine, she hastily dressed and went down in time to catch one of the last carriages.
They tell how the beautiful stranger was buried when the sun shone and the birds sang how solemnly the church-bell tolled, each knell seeming to cleave the clear sunlit air how the sorrowing young husband, so suddenly and so terribly bereft, walked first, the chief mourner in the sad procession; they tell how white his face was, and how at each toll of the solemn bell he winced as though some one had struck him a terrible blow how he tried hard to control himself, but how at the grave, when she was hidden forever from his sight, he stretched out his hands, crying, "Madaline, Madaline!" and how for the remainder of that day he shut himself up alone, refusing to hear the sound of a voice, to look at a human face refusing food, comfort, grieving like one who has no hope for the love he had lost.
In the mountain "Kunnan" King Olaf had hung a church-bell of pure gold, and it is guarded by the first priest who ever came to Nordland, who stands there in a white chasuble. On the day the priest rings the bell, Kunnan will become a big stone church, to which all Nordland, both above and below the sea, will resort.
To-morrow's Holy Thursday. From now till Sunday, nobody here will eat anything but a little bread and a few olives. The bells will cease to-morrow. If a single church-bell rang in Rome over this plain, and these mountains through the whole of Italy from mass to-morrow till mass on Saturday a whole nation would feel pain and outrage. Then on Saturday marvellous symbol! listen for the bells.
If Aasa had not yet tasted of food or drink in the mountain, she was still out of danger; and if the pastor would allow the church-bell to be brought up into the forest and rung near the rock where the laugh had been heard, the Trolds could be compelled to give her back.
She had saved it, unknown to Hobert, from the sale of eggs and other trifles, and had meant to surprise him by appearing in a new dress some morning when the church-bell rang; but now she turned the silver into her hand and counted it, thinking what nice warm flannel it would buy to make shirts for Hobert.
For many blocks he had walked unheedingly, but, hearing a church-bell strike the hour, he took out his watch and glanced at it. To go home was impossible. Turning into a side-street, he walked rapidly in a direction that led he knew not whither, and for a while let the stinging sensation of disappointment and rebellion possess him without restraint.
The fever had seemed slight at first, so that every one was shocked when there came suddenly a turn for the worse, and three days before Christmas Jimmie died. He had no more sincere mourner than his "Wolfie." The great gray creature howled in miserable answer to the church-bell tolling when he followed the body on Christmas Eve to the graveyard at St. Boniface.
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