leeper. I looked in
later; he had placed her in the coffin, but the top was not on and he
was on his knees beside her.

He did not bury her that day; but he never left her side; he sat by her
all day and all night. Next day he came to the door and looked at me.
I went in and understood that he wanted me to look for the last time on
her face. It was fairer than I ever saw it. He had cut her flowers
and placed them all about her, and on her breast was a small packet of
letters. All care, all suffering, all that was merely of the earth were
cleansed away, and she looked as she lay, like a dead angel. After I
came out I heard him fastening on the top, and when he finished I
went in again. He would have attempted to carry it by himself, but I
restrained him, and without a word he took the head and I the foot, and
so lifting her tenderly we went gently out and up toward the church. We
had to pause and rest several times, for he was almost worn out. After
we had lowered her into the grave I was in doubt what to do; but Olaf
drew from his coat his two books, and standing close by the side of the
grave he opened first the little Bible and began to read in a low but
distinct voice: "Lord, thou hast been our refuge, from one generation to
another. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and
the world were made, thou art God from everlasting, and world without
end."

When he finished this he turned and read again: "Now is Christ risen
from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept," etc.
They were the Psalm and the chapter which I had heard him read to Elsket
that first day when she became excited, and with which he had so often
charmed her restless spirit.

He closed, and I thought he was done, but he opened his hymn-book and
turning over a few leaves sang the same hymn he had sung to her that
day. He sang it all through to the end, the low, strange, dirge-like
hymn, and chanted as it was by that old man alone, standing in the
fading evening light beside the grave which he had dug for his daughter,
the last of his race, I never heard anything so moving. Then he knelt,
and clasping his hands offered a prayer. The words, from habit, ran
almost as they had done when he had prayed for Elsket before, that
God would be her Shepherd, her "Herder," and lead her beside the still
waters, and give her peace.

When he was through I waited a little, and then I took up a spade to
help him; but he reached o