“I am a feeble old man, in agony of weariness for lack of sleep; for I
have traveled far and searched long, but have found no place where I
might rest in peace. And I finally bethought me of a low room under a
sloping roof, where, in my childhood, I rested well and undisturbed. The
roof above is that same sloping roof, and beneath it is that chamber. And
I will give to thee, good sir, all the gold in my purse—and there is much
gold in it—if I may lodge there for one night only, and sleep once more
as I slept when I was a lad.”
And the good man of the house bids him enter and welcome, but refuses the
proffered gold. And Rudolph, the Czar, climbs up the narrow stairs to the
low room under the sloping roof, and he lies down there, forgetting to
look for the lifted sword, and he closes his weary eyes, and a delicious
drowsiness steals over him, and there is no fear in his heart, and
nothing molests him, and at last he sleeps, sleeps, sleeps.
* * * * *
What sound is that? A ringing of bells. It wakens Rudolph. He gazes
about the room. On a stand in the corner a lamp is dimly burning. Some
one is sitting here beside the bed. “Oh, go away, good sir, and leave me
in peace!” he moans piteously. “Did I not offer thee all the gold in my
purse? Why, then, dost thou trouble me? Do no murder, I beseech thee, for
I am old and feeble, and I have not slept before in a hundred years.”
“Thou art dreaming, Rudolph. There is nothing to fear.”
“Thou, my father!” and he seizes the two toil-hardened hands, covering
them with kisses and with tears. “How camest thou here? I feared I should
never behold thy face again! And where are my mother and my brother?”
“The dear mother and our little Karl will see thee in the morning to wish
thee a ‘Happy New Year.’”
A Happy New Year! Rudolph puts his hand to his forehead, as if to smooth
out some knot there underneath. “Truly, I do not know,” he murmurs, “it
all seemed so real. Have I been dreaming, dear father?”
And then the father explains how he heard wailing and shrieking in the
night, and came to learn the cause, but, fearing a fever, staid to watch
awhile.
“It is hard, dear father, that after thou hast been working all the day
thou must needs watch all the night.”
“I would do much more than that for Rudolph, although he is ‘only the son
of a carpenter.’”
“Alas, that I talked in my sleep!”
Hark, the bells! once more they clang together—all the bells in the town.
So it is, so it is the New Year! They are ringing in the New Year. And
these New-Year days—standing like mile-stones all along the highway of
Time—who gave them to the world for holidays? Was it not “the carpenter’s
son”? Rudolph, trying to smooth out the kink in his brain, finds that
thought entangled with it, somehow. After awhile he exclaims, with face
aglow:
“It is good that this is the first day of the year! That is the grand
time to turn over a new leaf—no, to put on a new suit of armor! For I
have learned something from my dream, father; it is this—thou art a Hero.
And I mean to be another, just like thee!”
And the father looks down into Rudolph’s eyes, and sees that the demon
has departed.