“Johan Fredrik has won,” says the colonel, proudly. “Did I not know it? I taught him to play. Yes, now we are dead, we three, and he alone alive.” Thereupon he gathers together the cards, rises, and goes, followed by the others, back to Ekeby. May the dead man have known and felt that not every one has forgotten him or his forsaken grave. Strange homage wild hearts bring to them they love; but he who lies outside the wall, he whose dead body was not allowed to rest in consecrated ground, he ought to be glad that not every one has rejected him. Friends, children of men, when I die I shall surely rest in the middle of the churchyard, in the tomb of my ancestors. I shall not have robbed my family of their means of subsistence, nor lifted my hand against my own life, but certainly I have not won such a love, surely will no one do as much for me as the pensioners did for that culprit. It is certain that no one will come in the evening, when the sun sets and it is lonely and dreary in the gardens of the dead, to place between my bony fingers the many-colored cards. Not even will any one come, which would please me more,—for cards tempt me little,—with fiddle and bow to the grave, that my spirit, which wanders about the mouldering dust, may rock in the flow of melody like a swan on glittering waves. CHAPTER XIV OLD SONGS Marianne Sinclair sat one quiet afternoon at the end of August in her room and arranged her old letters and other papers. Round about her was disorder. Great leather trunks and iron bound boxes had been dragged into the room. Her clothes covered the chairs and sofas. From attics and wardrobes and from the stained chests of drawers everything had been taken out, glistening silk and linen, jewels spread out to be polished, shawls and furs to be selected and inspected. Marianne was making herself ready for a long journey. She was not certain if she should ever return to her home. She was at a turning-point in her life and therefore burned a mass of old letters and diaries. She did not wish to be weighed down with records of the past. As she sits there, she finds a bundle of old verses. They were copies of old ballads, which her mother used to sing to her when she was little. She untied the string which held them together, and began to read. She smiled sadly when she had read for a while; the old songs spoke strange wisdom. Have no faith in happiness, have no faith in the appearance of happiness, have no faith in roses. “Trust not laughter,” they said. “See, the lovely maiden Valborg drives in a golden coach, and her lips smile, but she is as sorrowful as if hoofs and wheels were passing over her life’s happiness.” “Trust not the dance,” they said. “Many a foot whirls lightly over polished floor, while the heart is heavy as lead.” “Trust not the jest,” they said. “Many a one goes to the feast with jesting lips, while she longs to die for pain.” In what shall one believe? In tears and sorrow!