; they looked only
like black glass that could move about.

Everybody was sorry for the poor idiot Joergen.

It was he who, before he saw the light of day, was destined to a
career of earthly prosperity, of wealth and happiness, so great that
it was "_frightful pride, overweening arrogance_," to wish for, or to
believe in, a future life! All the high powers of his soul were
wasted. Nothing but hardships, sufferings, and disappointments had
been dealt out to him. A valuable bulb he was, torn up from his rich
native soil, and cast upon distant sands to rot and perish. Was that
being, made in the image of God, worth nothing more? Was he but the
sport of accidents or of chance? No! The God of infinite love would
give him a portion in another life for what he had suffered and been
deprived of here.

"The Lord is good to all: and His tender mercies are over all His
works."

These consolatory words, from one of the Psalms of David, were
repeated in devout faith by the pious old wife of the trader Broenne;
and her heartfelt prayer was, that our Lord would soon release the
poor benighted being, and receive him into God's gift of
grace--everlasting life.

* * * * *

In the churchyard, where the sand had drifted into piles against the
walls, was Clara buried. It appeared as if Joergen had never thought
about her grave; it did not enter into the narrow circle of his ideas,
which now only dwelt among wrecks of the past. Every Sunday he
accompanied the family to church, and he generally sat quiet with a
totally vacant look; but one day, while a psalm was being sung, he
breathed a sigh, his eyes lightened up, he turned them towards the
altar--towards that spot where, more than a year before, he had knelt,
with his dead friend at his side. He uttered her name, became as white
as a sheet, and tears rolled down his cheeks.

He was helped out of church, and then he said that he felt quite well,
and did not think anything had been the matter with him; the short
flash of memory had already faded away from him--the much-tried, the
sorely-smitten of God. Yet that God, our Creator, is all wisdom and
all love, who can doubt? Our hearts and our reason acknowledge it, and
the Bible proclaims it. "His tender mercies are over all His works."

In Spain, where, amidst laurels and orange trees, the Moorish golden
cupolas glitter in the warm air, where songs and castanets are heard,
sat, in a splendid mansion,