that I never could live without him! If I only saw him, or if I knew he was anywhere around, and he looked tolerably happy, and would only give me a word now and then, I wished for nothing more on earth, and would not have had a single tear unshed. "But just as he seemed to be getting on better, and to be feeling more at ease among people, there came word from the parish post-office that a fourth letter had now come, and that in it there were two hundred dollars! I thought I should drop right down on the spot where I stood. What should I do now? The letter, of course, I could get out of the way; but the money? I could not sleep for several nights on account of this money. I kept it up in the garret for a while, then left it in the cellar behind a barrel, and once I was so beside myself that I laid it in the window so that he might find it. When I heard him coming, I took it away again. At last I found a way, though. I gave him the money and said it had been out at interest since mother's lifetime. He spent it in improving the gard, as had been in my own mind, and there it was not lost. But then it happened that same autumn that he sat one evening wondering why Kristian had so entirely forgotten him. "Now the wound opened afresh, and the money burned. What I had done was a sin, and the sin had been of no use to me! "The mother who has sinned against her own child is the most unhappy of all mothers,--and yet I only did it out of love. So I shall be punished, I dare say, by losing what is dearest to me. For since midwinter he has taken up again the tune he sings when he is longing; he has sung it from boyhood up, and I never hear it without growing pale. Then I feel I could give up all for him, and now you shall see for yourself,"--she took a scrap of paper out of her bosom, unfolded it, and gave it to the priest,--"here is something he is writing at from time to time; it certainly belongs to that song. I brought it with me, for I cannot read such fine writing; please see if there is anything in it about his going away." There was only one stanza on this paper. For the second one there were half and whole lines here and there, as if it were a song he had forgotten, and was now calling to mind again, verse by verse. The first stanza ran,-- "Oh, how I wonder what I should see Over the lofty mountains! Snow here shuts out the view from me, Round about stands the green pine-tree. Longing to hasten over-- Dare it become a rover?" "Is it about his going away?" asked Margit, her eyes fixed eagerly on the priest's face. "Yes, it is," answered he, and let the paper drop. "Was I not sure of it! Ah, me! I know that tune so well!" She looked at the priest, her hands folded, anxious, intent, while tear after tear trickled down her cheek.