, a foreboding of unhappiness, in the
background of my mind--although dissipated in the brighter summer-time
of my companionship with Susanna--was therefore no sin, no burden of
crime, no dark mysterious exception in me from every other natural order
of things, but only a disease, actually only a disease, which was to be
treated with a correspondingly natural treatment!

I had never thought that any one could be as glad to hear that he was
mad, or at any rate that there was danger of his becoming so, as
over-good news; but now I know that such a thing can be.

I prayed now, as it seemed for the first time in my life, really,
confidently, and trustfully to God, to whom I stood in the same relation
as every one else, or, if there were any difference, even nearer,
because I was a poor, sick creature.

I felt as if God's sun had shone out upon me after a long, weary, rainy
day. I prayed for myself, for Susanna, for my father; and in the
enjoyment of this new condition of security I went on to pray first for
every single person at home, then for those at the parsonage, then for
the clerk, and at last, for want of others, as we do in church, for "all
who are sick and sorrowful," among whom, with a glad heart, I now
classed myself.

CHAPTER VI

_AT THE CLERK'S_

It was only two days before I was to start for Trondenaes in a vessel
which was lying ready to go north.

While I was irresolutely considering every possible means of getting a
last talk with Susanna before I started, there came a message from the
clerk to say that I must be sure to come out to him the next day at
eleven o'clock precisely; he would not be at home later.

The same morning that the message came Susanna had been at the clerk's.
Without saying a word, she sat down at the table with her face buried in
her arms.

When the alarmed clerk pressed the "child of his heart"--as he called
her in his concern--for an explanation, she at length lifted up a
tear-stained face to him, and said she was crying because she was so
very, very unhappy.

"But why, dear Susanna?"

"Because," burst suddenly on his ear, "I love David, and he loves me,
and we are engaged; but no one must know it except you--and you will not
betray us?"

With this last question she threw herself weeping upon the neck of the
stunned and bewildered clerk, who in his heart was already won over,
long before he had made out what it was he was undertaking.

He replaced Susanna in