When she at last reached Ekeby, and the pensioners hurried to help her out of the sledge, they could hardly recognize her, for she was as kind and gentle as their own young countess. The older ones, who had seen her as a young girl, whispered to one another: “It is not the major’s wife at Ekeby; it is Margareta Celsing who has come back.” Great was the pensioners’ joy to see her come so kind and so free from all thoughts of revenge; but it was soon changed to grief when they found how ill she was. She had to be carried immediately into the guest-room in the wing, and put to bed. But on the threshold she turned and spoke to them. “It has been God’s storm,” she said,—“God’s storm. I know now that it has all been for the best!” Then the door to the sick-room closed, and they never saw her again. There is so much to say to one who is dying. The words throng to the lips when one knows that in the next room lies one whose ears will soon be closed for always. “Ah, my friend, my friend,” one wants to say, “can you forgive? Can you believe that I have loved you in spite of everything! Ah, my friend, thanks for all the joy you have given me!” That will one say and so much, much more. But the major’s wife lay in a burning fever, and the voices of the pensioners could not reach her. Would she never know how they had worked, how they had taken up her work? After a little while the pensioners went down to the smithy. There all work was stopped; but they threw new coal and new ore into the furnace, and made ready to smelt. They did not call the smith, who had gone home to celebrate Christmas, but worked themselves at the forge. If the major’s wife could only live until the hammer got going, it would tell her their story. Evening came and then night, while they worked. Several of them thought, how strange it was that they should again celebrate the night before Christmas in the smithy. Kevenhüller, who had been the architect of the mill and the smithy, and Christian Bergh stood by the forge and attended to the melting iron. Gösta and Julius were the stokers. Some of the others sat on the anvil under the raised hammer, and others sat on coal-carts and piles of pig-iron. Löwenborg was talking to Eberhard, the philosopher, who sat beside him on the anvil. “Sintram dies to-night,” he said. “Why just to-night?” asked Eberhard. “You know that we made an agreement last year. Now we have done nothing which has been ungentlemanly, and therefore he has lost.” “You who believe in such things know very well that we have done a great deal which has been ungentlemanly. First, we did not help the major’s wife; second, we began to work; third, it was not quite right that Gösta Berling did not kill himself, when he had promised.”