So they found him, and the little Frau Pastorin sat down by him in the chair, and put her arms around him and closed his eyes, and laid her head against his, and cried silently, and Louise threw herself at his feet, and folded her hands upon his knees, and looked, with tearful eyes, at the two dear, still faces. Then the little Frau Pastorin folded down the leaf in the Bible, and took it gently out of his hand, and she rose up, and Louise rose also, and clung about her neck, and they both broke into loud weeping, and sought protection and comfort in each other, until it grew to be twilight. Then the little Frau Pastorin took the Pastor's boots and her shoes, and put them back into the cupboard, saying, "I bless the day, when you came together into this house;" and Louise put her little shoes beside them, saying, "And I the day, when you first crossed the threshold," and then they locked up the chest, with all its joys. After three days, good Pastor Behrens was buried, in his churchyard, in a place which he had selected, during his life, which one could see, through the clear panes of glass, from the living-room of the parsonage, and upon which fell the first beams of the morning sun. The funeral guests had departed, Habermann also had been obliged to go; but Uncle Bräsig had explained that he should spend the night at the parsonage. Through the day, he had lent a helping hand, and now, as he saw the two women standing at the window, arm in arm, lost in sorrowful thoughts, he stole softly out of the room, up to his sleeping-chamber, and looked, through the twilight, over to the churchyard, where the dark grave lay in the white snow. He thought of the man who lay beneath it, how often he had extended the hand, to help and to counsel him, and he vowed to repay the debt he owed him, with all his might, to the Frau Pastorin. And underneath, in the living-room, stood the two bereaved women, also looking over at the dark grave, and vowing silently, in their hearts, each to the other, all the love and friendship, which he had so often enjoined, and so constantly practiced. And the little Frau Pastorin thanked God and her Pastor that she had so sweet a comforter in her sorrow as she held in her arms, and she stroked Louise's soft hair, and kissed her again and again; and Louise prayed to God and her other father, that she might be endowed with all that was good and lovely, that she might lay it all in her foster-mother's lap. Fresh graves are like hot-beds, which the gardeners plant; the fairest flowers spring out of them; but poisonous toadstools shoot up, also, from these beds.