At last all her fears and scruples vanished before this great longing. She loved, she loved; she could not live without the dead! She knew now that she could not consider anybody or anything but him--him alone. And when the spring came in earnest, when mounds and graves once again appeared all over the churchyard, when the little hearts of the iron crosses again began to tinkle in the wind, and the beaded wreaths to sparkle in their glass cases, and when the earth at last was ready to receive the little coffin, she had ready a black cross to place on his grave. On the cross from arm to arm was written in plain white letters, 'HERE RESTS MY CHILD,' and underneath, on the stem of the cross, stood her name. She did not mind that the whole world would know how she had sinned. Other things were of no consequence to her; all she thought about was that she would now be able to pray at the grave of her child. _From a Swedish_ HOMESTEAD X _The_ BROTHERS _The_ BROTHERS It is very possible that I am mistaken, but it seems to me that an astonishing number of people die this year. I have a feeling that I cannot go down the street without meeting a hearse. One cannot help thinking about all those who are carried to the churchyard. I always feel as if it were so sad for the dead who have to be buried in towns. I can hear how they moan in their coffins. Some complain that they have not had plumes on the hearse; some count up the wreaths, and are not satisfied; and then there are some who have only been followed by two or three carriages, and who are hurt by it. The dead ought never to know and experience such things; but people in towns do not at all understand how they ought to honour those who have entered into eternal rest. When I really think over it I do not know any place where they understand it better than at home in Svartsjö. If you die in the parish of Svartsjö you know you will have a coffin like that of everyone else--an honest black coffin which is like the coffins in which the country judge and the local magistrate were buried a year or two ago. For the same joiner makes all the coffins, and he has only one pattern; the one is made neither better nor worse than the other. And you know also, for you have seen it so many times, that you will be carried to the church on a waggon which has been painted black for the occasion. You need not trouble yourself at all about any plumes. And you know that the whole village will follow you to the church, and that they will drive as slowly and as solemnly for you as for a landed proprietor.