Tommelise said nothing; but when the two others had turned their backs, she bent over it, stroked aside the feathers which lay over its head, and kissed its closed eyes.
"Perhaps it was that same swallow which sang so sweetly to me in summer," thought she; "what a deal of pleasure it caused me, the dear, beautiful bird!"
The mole stopped up the opening which it had made for the daylight to come in, and accompanied the ladies home. Tommelise, however, could not sleep in the night; so she got up out of bed, and wove a small, beautiful mat of hay; and that she carried down and spread over the dead bird; laid soft cotton-wool, which she had found in the fieldmouse's parlor, around the bird, that it might lie warm in the cold earth.
"Farewell, thou pretty little bird," said she; "farewell, and thanks for thy beautiful song, in summer, when all the trees were green, and the sun shone so warmly upon us!"
With this she laid her head upon the bird's breast, and the same moment was quite amazed, for it seemed to her as if there were a slight movement within it. It was the bird's heart. The bird was not dead; it lay in a swoon, and now being warmed, it was reanimated.
In the autumn all the swallows fly away to the warm countries; but if there be one which tarries behind, it becomes stiff with cold, so that it falls down as if dead, and the winter's snow covers it.
Tommelise was quite terrified, for in comparison with her the bird was a very large creature; but she took courage, however, laid the cotton-wool closer around the poor swallow, and fetched a coverlet of chrysanthemum leaves, which she had for her bed, and laid it over its head.
Next night she listened again, and it was quite living, but so weak that it could only open its eyes a very little, and see Tommelise, who stood with a piece of touchwood in her hand, for other light she had none.
"Thanks thou shalt have, thou pretty little child!" said the sick swallow to her; "I have been beautifully revived! I shall soon recover my strength, and be able to fly again out into the warm sunshine!"
"O," said she, "it is so cold out-of-doors! it snows and freezes! stop in thy warm bed, and I will nurse thee!"
She brought the swallow water, in a flower-leaf, and it drank it, and related to her how it had torn one of its wings upon a thorn-bush, and, therefore, had not been able to fly so well as the other swallows, who had flown far, far away, into the warm countries. It had, at last, fallen down upon the ground; but more than that it knew not, nor how it had come there.