CHAPTER XI.
_CONCLUSION_ I can now calmly write down the little, for me so much, that remains to be told--for many years it would have been impossible.
The storm lasted from Saturday midday until Sunday night, when towards morning the wind gradually subsided into complete stillness, although the sea continued restless.
The same day, Monday, at midday, there landed at the parsonage landing-place, not the minister's white house-boat, that was expected home, but an ordinary tarred, ten-oared boat, with a number of people in it.
From it four of the men slowly bore a burden between them up to the house, while a big man and a little woman went, bowed down, hand in hand, after them.

It was the minister and his wife.
I understood at once what had happened, and my heart cried with despair.
The dreadful message, which came to us directly after, told me nothing new--it only confirmed my belief that it was the minister's daughter Susanna they had borne up.
The parsonage boat had been only a little more than three-quarters of a mile away from home that Saturday morning when the storm came on so suddenly.

A "windfall" had come down with terrible force from the mountains into the Sound, and had capsized the boat, which was not far from land.
The minister had quickly helped his wife up on to the boat, and the men held on round the edge, while they drifted before the wind the short distance in to the shore.

But he searched in vain for his child, to find her and save her.
With the sea seething round the boat, the strong man three times in his despair let go his hold in order to swim to the place where he imagined he saw her in the water.

He was going to try again, but his wife, in great distress, begged his men to hinder him, and they did so.
They said afterwards that they saw drops of perspiration running down the minister's forehead, as he lay there on the boat in the wintry-cold sea, and that they believed he even thought of purposely letting go his hold that he might follow his daughter.
Too late they found out that Susanna was under the boat.