Since he died the pensioners had only been twelve; since he died no one had come to take the place of the thirteenth,—no one but the devil, who on Christmas Eve had crept out of the furnace. The pensioners had found his fate more bitter than that of his predecessors. Of course they knew that one of them must die each year. What harm was there in that? Pensioners may not be old. Can their dim eyes no longer distinguish the cards, can their trembling hands no longer lift the glass, what is life for them, and what are they for life? But to lie like a dog by the churchyard wall, where the protecting sods may not rest in peace, but are trodden by grazing sheep, wounded by spade and plough, where the wanderer goes by without slackening his pace, and where the children play without subduing their laughter and jests,—to rest there, where the stone wall prevents the sound from coming when the angel of the day of doom wakes with his trumpet the dead within,—oh, to lie there! Beerencreutz rows his boat over the Löfven. He passes in the evening over the lake of my dreams, about whose shores I have seen gods wander, and from whose depths my magic palace rises. He rows by Lagön’s lagoons, where the pines stand right up from the water, growing on low, circular shoals, and where the ruin of the tumble-down Viking castle still remains on the steep summit of the island; he rows under the pine grove on Borg’s point, where one old tree still hangs on thick roots over the cleft, where a mighty bear had been caught and where old mounds and graves bear witness of the age of the place. He rows to the other side of the point, gets out below the churchyard, and then walks over mowed fields, which belong to the count at Borg, to Acquilon’s grave. Arrived there, he bends down and pats the turf, as one lightly caresses the blanket under which a sick friend is lying. Then he takes out a pack of cards and sits down beside the grave. “He is so lonely outside here, Johan Fredrik. He must long sometimes for a game.” “It is a sin and a shame that such a man shall lie here,” says the great bear-hunter, Anders Fuchs, and sits down at his side. But little Ruster, the flute-player, speaks with broken voice, while the tears run from his small red eyes. “Next to you, colonel, next to you he was the finest man I have ever known.” These three worthy men sit round the grave and deal the cards seriously and with zeal. I look out over the world, I see many graves. There rest the mighty ones of the earth, weighed down by marble. Funeral marches thunder over them. Standards are sunk over those graves. I see the graves of those who have been much loved. Flowers, wet with tears, caressed with kisses, rest lightly on their green sods. I see forgotten graves, arrogant graves, lying resting-places, and others which say nothing, but never before did I see the right-bower and the joker with the bells in his cap offered as entertainment to a grave’s occupant.