She was buried in the paupers’ churchyard.  Maren planted a little rose-tree over the grave; the boy stood by her side the while.

“My darling mother!” he sighed, as the tears streamed down from his eyes.  “It was not true that she was good-for-nothing!”

“No, indeed!” cried her old friend, looking up to heaven.  “Let the world say she was good-for-nothing; our Lord in his heavenly kingdom will not say so.”

“IN THE UTTERMOST PARTS OF THE SEA”

By HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN

Some large ships were sent up toward the North Pole, for the purpose of discovering the boundaries of land and sea, and of trying how far men could make their way.

A year and a day had elapsed; amid mist and ice had they, with great difficulty, steered further and further; the winter had now begun; the sun had set, one long night would continue during many, many weeks.  One unbroken plain of ice spread around them; the ships were all fast moored to it; the snow lay about in heaps, and had even shaped itself into cubiform houses, some as big as our barrows, some only just large enough for two or three men to find shelter within.  Darkness they could not complain of, for the Northern Lights—­Nature’s fireworks—­now red, now blue, flashed unceasingly, and the snow glistened so brightly.

At times when it was brightest came troops of the natives, strange-looking figures, clad in hairy skins, and with sledges made out of hard fragments of ice; they brought skins to exchange, which the sailors were only too glad to use as warm carpets inside their snow houses, and as beds whereon they could rest under their snowy tents, while outside prevailed an intensity of cold such as we never experience during our severest winters.  But the sailors remembered that at home it was still autumn; and they thought of the warm sunbeams and the leaves still clinging to the trees in varied glories of crimson and gold.  Their watches told them it was evening, and time for rest, and in one of the snow houses two sailors had already lain down to sleep; the youngest of these two had with him his best home-treasure, the Bible that his grandmother had given him at parting.  Every night it lay under his pillow; he had known its contents from childhood, and every day he read a portion; and often as he lay on his couch, he recalled to mind those holy words of comfort, “If I should take the wings of the morning, and remain in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there should Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand should hold me.”

These sublime words of faith were on his lips as he closed his eyes, when sleep came to him, and dreams with sleep—­busy, swift-winged dreams, proving that though the body may rest, the soul must ever be awake.  First he seemed to hear the melodies of songs dear to him in his home; a mild summer breeze seemed to breathe upon him, and a light shone upon his couch, as though the snowy dome above him had become