o the
little boy, and always around them floated the fragrance of the elder
blossom, and ever above them waved the red flag with the white cross,
under which the old seaman had sailed. The boy--who had become a youth,
and who had gone as a sailor out into the wide world and sailed to warm
countries where the coffee grew, and to whom the little girl had given
an elder blossom from her bosom for a keepsake, when she took leave of
him--placed the flower in his hymn book; and when he opened it in
foreign lands he always turned to the spot where this flower of
remembrance lay, and the more he looked at it the fresher it appeared.
He could, as it were, breathe the homelike fragrance of the woods, and
see the little girl looking at him from between the petals of the flower
with her clear blue eyes, and hear her whispering, "It is beautiful here
at home in spring and summer, in autumn and in winter," while hundreds
of these home scenes passed through his memory.

Many years had passed, and he was now an old man, seated with his old
wife under an elder tree in full blossom. They were holding each other's
hands, just as the great-grandfather and grandmother had done, and
spoke, as they did, of olden times and of the golden wedding. The little
maiden with the blue eyes and with the elder blossoms in her hair sat in
the tree and nodded to them and said, "To-day is the golden wedding."

[Illustration: As she placed them on the heads of the old people, each
flower became a golden crown.]

And then she took two flowers out of her wreath and kissed them, and
they shone first like silver and then like gold, and as she placed them
on the heads of the old people, each flower became a golden crown. And
there they sat like a king and queen under the sweet-scented tree,
which still looked like an elder bush. Then he related to his old wife
the story of the Elder-tree Mother, just as he had heard it told when he
was a little boy, and they both fancied it very much like their own
story, especially in parts which they liked the best.

"Well, and so it is," said the little maiden in the tree. "Some call me
Elder Mother, others a dryad, but my real name is Memory. It is I who
sit in the tree as it grows and grows, and I can think of the past and
relate many things. Let me see if you have still preserved the flower."

Then the old man opened his hymn book, and there lay the elder flower,
as fresh as if it had only just been placed there, and M