but all true
enough; people older than he who came from the hamlet to visit him
confirmed it, and wondered at hearing him speak of events that must
have happened when he was but two or three years old. Soeren forgot
the latter years of his life, indeed he might never have lived them
so completely had they faded from his mind.

This saddened Maren. They had lived a long life, and gone through so
much together, and how much more pleasant it would have been, if
they could have talked of the past together once more before they
parted. But Soeren would not listen, when it came to their mutual
memories. No, the garden on the old farm--where Soeren lived when
five years old--that he could remember! Where this tree stood, and
that--and what kind of fruit it bore.

And when he had gone as far back as he could remember, his mind
would wander forward again, and in his delirium he would rave of his
days as a shepherd boy or sailor boy and heaven knows what.

In his uneasy dreams he mixed up all his experiences, the travels of
his youth, his work and difficulties. At one minute he would be on
the sea furling sail in the storm, the next he would struggle with
the ground. Maren who stood over him listened with terror to all
that he toiled with; he seemed to be taking his life in one long
stride. Many were the tribulations he had been through, and of which
she now heard for the first time. When his mind cleared once more,
he would be worn out with beads of perspiration standing on his
forehead.

His old partners came to see him, and then they went through it
again--Soeren _had_ to talk of old times. He could only say a few
words, weak as he was; but then the others would continue. Maren
begged them not to speak too much, as it made him restless, and he
would struggle with it in his dreams.

It was worst when he imagined himself on the old farm; pitiful to
see how he fought against the sea's greedy advance, clutching the
bedclothes with his wasted fingers. It was a wearisome leave-taking
with existence, as wearisome as existence itself had been to him.

One day when Maren had been to the village shop, Ditte ran out
screaming, as she came back. "Grandad's dead!" she burst out
sobbing. Soeren lay bruised and senseless across the doorstep to the
kitchen. He had been up on the big chest, meddling with the hands of
the clock. Maren dragged him to bed and bathed his wounds, and when
it was done he lay quietly following her movements