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"O God, O God, help us get out of the wood and home to mother!" whined Trientje. When they opened their eyes again, they saw below them, in the bottom, a huge beech with a bough struck off and the white splinters bare, with leaves awkwardly twisted right round: it stood there like a fellow with one arm off.
Where's Horieneke?" asked Stanse, suddenly. From the little green arbour, in between the trees, a golden curly-head came peeping, followed by a little white body and little Trientje too, holding a great bunch of yellow daffodils in her hand. Stanse stuck out her arms in the air: "Oh, you little butterfly! Come along here, you're as lovely as an angel!"
At noon, under the blazing sun, all three started for the wood, after blackberries. Trientje was in her cotton pinafore, with a straw hat on her head and a wicker basket on her arm. Lowietje stood in his worn breeches and his torn shirt; in his pocket he had a new climbing-cord.
Trientje heard them shout and yell and, a little later, she saw her little brother sitting high up on the slippery trunk of a beech. She put her hands to her mouth and screamed: "Lo wie!..." It echoed three or four times over the low shoots and against the tall trees, but Lowietje did not hear. A man now came striding down the path; he carried a gun on his shoulder.
And he let a strip fall. They were torn from end to end, from top to bottom, in each leg. "Mother will be angry," said Trientje, very earnestly. She took some pins from her frock and fastened the tears, so that the skin did not show. Suddenly fell a rumbling thunder-clap that droned through all the wood and died away in a long chain of rough sounds.
Then, when they were all hung up again in their places on the wall, they all started whistling together till the kitchen rang with it. The baby screamed in its cradle. Trientje cried and mother stamped across the floor in her heavy wooden shoes. The West-Flemings brew a beer so extremely strong that it is served in quite small glasses, not more than half the size of an ordinary tumbler.
The wind came up, the branches rocked and writhed and the leaves fluttered and tugged and heavy drops beat into the sand. "Quick, quick!" said Trientje. "It's going to lighten!" Lowietje said nothing and Poentje cried. Each took the child by one hand and they ran as fast as they could to get from under the trees. "Ooh! Ooh!"
Trientje tied her pinafore over the little one's face and they sat there huddled together, shuddering and peeping through their fingers and saying loud Our Fathers. "You must not look, Lowietje: the lightning would strike you blind." The trees wrung their heavy boughs and everything squeaked and rustled terribly.
The boys had only just seen him and, on every side, they came scrambling out of the tree-tops, slid down the trunks and darted into the underwood. Breathless, bewildered and scared to death, Lowietje came to his sister and, with his two hands, held the rents of his trousers together: "There were eight eggs there, Trientje, but the keeper came and, in the sliding, my trousers...."
Mother was busy with the baby in the cradle; Horieneke was showing her new holy pictures to Trientje; and Bertje and the other boys had gone out to play in the road. The bells rang again, this time for high mass. Many small things had still to be rummaged out, clothes to be pinned and buttoned; and the boys, with their Sunday penny in their pocket, marched up the wide road to high mass.
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