before him, just as he remembered her in the days of her childhood. He
followed the child to the wretched house, and ascended the narrow, crazy
staircase which led to a little garret in the roof. The air in the room was
heavy and stifling, no light was burning, and from one corner came sounds
of moaning and sighing. It was the mother of the child who lay there on a
miserable bed. With the help of a match, Ib struck a light, and approached
her.
“Can I be of any service to you?” he asked. “This little girl brought me
up here; but I am a stranger in this city. Are there no neighbors or any one
whom I can call?”
Then he raised the head of the sick woman, and smoothed her pillow. He
started as he did so. It was Christina of the heath! No one had mentioned
her name to Ib for years; it would have disturbed his peace of mind,
especially as the reports respecting her were not good. The wealth which
her husband had inherited from his parents had made him proud and
arrogant. He had given up his certain appointment, and travelled for six
months in foreign lands, and, on his return, had lived in great style, and got
into terrible debt. For a time he had trembled on the high pedestal on which
he had placed himself, till at last he toppled over, and ruin came. His
numerous merry companions, and the visitors at his table, said it served him
right, for he had kept house like a madman. One morning his corpse was
found in the canal. The cold hand of death had already touched the heart of
Christina. Her youngest child, looked for in the midst of prosperity, had
sunk into the grave when only a few weeks old; and at last Christina herself
became sick unto death, and lay, forsaken and dying, in a miserable room,
amid poverty she might have borne in her younger days, but which was now
more painful to her from the luxuries to which she had lately been
accustomed. It was her eldest child, also a Little Christina, whom Ib had
followed to her home, where she suffered hunger and poverty with her
mother.
“It makes me unhappy to think that I shall die, and leave this poor child,”
sighed she. “Oh, what will become of her?” She could say no more.
