Those old manuscripts, scribbled over with heathenish confessions, have not yet been tested before the world. Uncle Eberhard’s name has not yet reached the heights of fame. His great work lies hidden in a chest in the lumber-room under the gallery stairs in the Svartsjö church; it shall first see the light of day at the end of the century. But why has he done this? Was he afraid not to have proved his point? Did he fear persecutions? You little know Uncle Eberhard. Understand it now; he has loved the truth, not his own glory. So he has sacrificed the latter, not the former, in order that a deeply loved child might die in the belief in that she has most cared for. O Love, thou art indeed eternal! CHAPTER XIX THE BROOM-GIRL No one knows the place in the lee of the mountain where the pines grow thickest and deep layers of moss cover the ground. How should any one know it? No man’s foot has ever trodden it before; no man’s tongue has given it a name. No path leads to that hidden spot. It is the most solitary tract in the forest, and now thousands of people are looking for it. What an endless procession of seekers! They would fill the Bro church,—not only Bro, but Löfviks and Svartsjö. All who live near the road rush out and ask, “Has anything happened? Is the enemy upon us? Where are you going? Tell us where.” “We are searching,” they answer. “We have been searching for two days. We shall go on to-day; but afterwards we can do no more. We are going to look through the Björne wood and the firclad heights west of Ekeby.” It was from Nygård, a poor district far away among the eastern mountains, the procession had first started. The beautiful girl with the heavy, black hair and the red cheeks had disappeared a week before. The broom-girl, to whom Gösta Berling had wished to engage himself, had been lost in the great forests. No one had seen her for a week. So the people started from Nygård to search through the wood. And everybody they met joined in the search. Sometimes one of the new-comers asks,— “You men from Nygård, how has it all happened? Why do you let that beautiful girl go alone in strange paths? The forest is deep, and God has taken away her reason.” “No one disturbs her,” they answer; “she disturbs no one. She goes as safely as a child. Who is safer than one God himself must care for? She has always come back before.” So have the searching crowd gone through the eastern woods, which shut in Nygård from the plain. Now on the third day it passes by the Bro church towards the woods west of Ekeby. But wherever they go, a storm of wondering rages; constantly a man from the crowd has to stop to answer questions: “What do you want? What are you looking for?” “We are looking for the blue-eyed, dark-haired girl. She has laid herself down to die in the forest. She has been gone a week.” “Why has she laid herself down to die in the forest? Was she hungry? Was she unhappy?”