Again resounded the echo of the shades, merry as a hunting-song in the wood which is sung by a happy throng of children:  “Blessed be her memory!”

Thereupon the dead swarmed out of the church, and Mamsell Fredrika wiped away a tear from the corner of her eye.

“I will not go home with you,” said her dead sister.  “Will you not stop here now also?”

“I should like to, but I cannot.  There is a book which I must make ready first.”

“Well, good-night then, and beware of the knight of the church road,” said her dead sister, and smiled roguishly in her old way.

Then Mamsell Fredrika drove home.  All Arsta still slept, and she went quietly to her room, lay down and slept again.

***

A few hours later she drove to the real early mass.  She drove in a closed carriage, but she let down the window to look at the stars; it is possible too that she, as of old, was looking for her knight.

And there he was; he sprang forward to the window of the carriage.  He sat his prancing charger magnificently.  His scarlet cloak fluttered in the wind.  His pale face was stern, but beautiful.

“Will you be mine?” he whispered.

She was transported in her old heart by the lofty figure with the waving plumes.  She forgot that she needed to live a year yet.

“I am ready,” she whispered.

“Then I will come and fetch you in a week at your father’s house.”

He bent down and kissed her, and then he vanished; she began to shiver and tremble under Death’s kiss.

A little later Mamsell Fredrika sat in the church, in the same place where she had sat as a child.  Here she forgot both the knight and the ghosts, and sat smiling in quiet delight at the thought of the revelation of the glory of God.

But either she was tired because she had not slept the whole night, or the warmth and the closeness and the smell of the candles had a soporific effect on her as on many another.

She fell asleep, only for a second; she absolutely could not help it.

Perhaps, too, God wished to open to her the gates of the land of dreams.

In that single second when she slept, she saw her stern father, her lovely, beautifully-dressed mother, and the ugly, little Petrea sitting in the church.  And the soul of the child was compressed by an anguish greater than has ever been felt by a grown person.  The priest stood in the pulpit and spoke of the stern, avenging God, and the child sat pale and trembling, as if the words had been axe-blows and had gone through its heart.

“Oh, what a God, what a terrible God!”

In the next second she was awake, but she trembled and shuddered, as after the kiss of death on the church-road.  Her heart was once more caught in the wild grief of her childhood.

She wished to hurry from the church.  She must go home and write her book, her glorious book on the God of peace and love.