The Wind Tells about Valdemar Daae and His Daughters

There it lay at the gate, like a broom for sweeping out - and there was sweeping out there, you may be sure! But I had expected it.

"Oh, that was a day of bitterness - a sorrowful day! But with a stiff neck and a stout back the proud man bore his burden bravely.

"They had nothing left except the clothes they wore, and the new alchemistic glass, filled with the brittle treasure that had promised so much - the fool's gold scraped up from the floor; this Valdemar Daae hid in his breast. He took his cane in his hand, and with his three daughters the once rich nobleman walked out of Borreby Mansion. I blew cold upon his flaming cheeks and stroked his gray beard and long white hair to and fro as I sang, as loudly as I could, "Whew, whew, whew! This was the end of his glory!

"Ide and Anne Dorothea walked on each side of him, but as Johanne crossed the threshold she turned back. Perhaps, as he gazed so wistfully at the red stones that had once made up Marsk Stig's castle, she remembered the old ballad about Marsk Stig's daughters:

The elder took the younger by the hand,

And forth they went to a distant land.

"Was she thinking of this song? Here were three daughters, and their father was with them. They turned off from the highway, where they had used to drive in their carriage, and made their way to Smidstrup Field, to a little shack of mud they had rented for ten marks a year. These bare walls and empty chambers were their new 'mansion.' Crows and jackdaws circled above their heads, screaming, as if in mockery, 'Turned out of the nest! Caw, Caw!' just as they had screamed in Borreby Wood when the oaks were being cut down. Mr Daae and his daughters must have understood the cries; they were not pleasant to listen to, so I did my best to drown them out by blowing about their ears.

"Thus they passed into the shack of mud on Smidstrup Field, and I passed away over field and moor, through bare hedges and leafless woods, away over open waters, to other lands - whew, whew!