osite direction, always
toward the worst.

One day I found him lying and watching from his bed--where he now spent
nearly the whole day--my little Anton, who had "made a steamboat" out of
his old violin-case--of which the lid was gone--and was travelling with
it on the floor, touching at foreign ports. When I came up to the bed,
David told me, smiling, that he had been at home in Nordland playing on
the beach again.

My wife had, meantime, become more and more his sick-nurse. She was with
him two or three times a day, and sat at his bedside. He often held her
hand, or asked her to read him something out of his old Bible. The
portions he chose were generally those in which the Old Testament
speaks of love and lovers. He dwelt especially on the story of Jacob and
Rachel.

My wife, who had now become very fond of him, confided to me one day
that she was sure she knew what my friend was suffering from; it was
certainly nothing but unrequited love.

She had never thought any one could look so touchingly beautiful as he
did, when death was near. When he lay still and smiled, it was as though
he were thinking of a tryst he should go to, as soon as he had done with
us here on earth.

One evening he asked my wife to sit with him. At nine o'clock a message
came for me; but when I got there, he was gone.

He had asked my wife to read to him, for the first time, a part of
Solomon's Song, where she found an old mark in his Bible. It was the
second chapter, in which both the bride and the bridegroom speak, and
which begins: "I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valley"; and
ends: "Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved,
and be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether."

He had asked her to read it a second time, but during the reading he had
quietly fallen asleep.

And there he lay, beautiful in death, with a peaceful smile, as though
he were greeting just such a grove, on the other side of the mountains
of Bether.

Next summer there stood a wooden cross, and a blooming, wild briar-rose,
on a grave in one of the churchyards of the town. There rests my friend
David Holst.

* * * * *

As a beginning of the story of my friend's life, I found, laid aside, a
section, part of which seems to have been added at a riper age. It shows
with what strong ties nature had bound him to his home, and with what
affection he clung to it.

*