Never were
verses sung with more effect.
The dance goes on.
The girls from the valley are armoured five layers thick, but who cares
for that! All are used to hard work. And the dance goes on--ay, the
thunder goes on. _Brandevin_ helps things bravely along. The witches'
cauldron is fairly steaming now. At three in the morning the local police
force appears, and knocks on the floor with his stick. _Finis._ The
dancers go off in the moonlight, and spread out near and far. And nine
months later, the girls from the valley show proof that after all they
were one layer of armour short. Never was such an effect of being one
layer short.
The river is quieter now--not much of a river to look at: the winter is
come upon it now. It drives the mills and works that stand on its banks,
for, in spite of all, it is and will be a great river still, but it shows
no life. It has shut down the lid on itself.
And the rapids have suffered, too. And I who stood watching them once and
listening, and thought to myself if one lived down there in the roar of it
for ever, what would one's brain be like at last? But now the rapids are
dwindled, and murmur faintly.
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