this place, for I cannot tell you how I long to get once more to my
father, and among pious Christians."

John, too, had not been unaffected by the crowing of the cocks, and he
felt what he had never felt there before, a longing after the land where
the sun shines.

"Dear Elizabeth," said he, "all you say is true, and I now feel it is a
sin for Christians to stay here, and it seems to me as if our Lord said
to us in that cry of the cocks, 'Come up, ye Christian children, out of
those abodes of illusion and magic. Come to the light of the stars, and
act as children of the light.' I now feel that it was a great sin for me
to come down here, but I trust I shall be forgiven on account of my
youth, for I was only a boy, and knew not what I did. But now I will not
stay a day longer. They cannot keep _me_ here."

At these last words Elizabeth turned pale, for she recollected that she
was a servant, and must serve her fifty years.

"And what will it avail me," cried she, "that I shall continue young,
and be but as of twenty years when I go out, for my father and mother
will be dead, and all my companions old and grey; and you, dearest John,
will be old and grey also," cried she, throwing herself on his bosom.

John was thunderstruck at this, for it had never before occurred to him.
He, however, comforted her as well as he could, and declared he would
never leave the place without her. He spent the whole night in forming
various plans. At last he fixed on one, and in the morning he despatched
his servant to summon to his apartment six of the principal of the
little people. When they came, John thus mildly addressed them--