He looked more languid and worn out than usual; but his face wore a beatified expression, as of a man who had wrestled with his fate, and had won rest and resignation.

If possible, he said, he would like to speak to my wife that same morning; but he would rather talk with me at once, and so I must sit down for a little while.

With a smile—­that same quiet, sweet, mysterious smile of his that I knew so well, but which now seemed no longer to shun observation—­he turned to me saying, as he laid his hand on my shoulder and looked into my face: 

“My dear, kind Frederick!  I know for certain, though I cannot tell you why, that I shall not live to see the spring again.  What is wanting neither you nor any one else can give me, only God; but of all men you have been the kindest to me, and your friendship has reached farther than you would ever imagine.  You have a right to know him who has been your friend.  When I am gone—­and that will undoubtedly be this winter, perhaps sooner than you, judging from my condition, think—­you will find some memoranda in my drawer; they are the history of my early youth, but uneventful as that was, it has had its effect upon my whole life.  It will tell you that the world has been sad, very sad for me, and that I am as glad as an escaped bird to leave it.”

“There was a time,” he added after some hesitation, “when I wished to be buried in a churchyard up in Nordland; but now I think that the place does not make any difference, and that one can rest just as peacefully down here.”

Saying which, he pressed my hand, and asked me to go for my wife.

When she came, she was surprised to see him brighter and in better spirits than she had ever thought he could be.  He wanted, he said, to ask a favour of her.  It was a whim of his; but, if he should be called away, she must promise him to plant a wild rose upon his grave next spring.

My wife understood how sad the request was when I told her what had already passed; for David had looked so confident and bright when he was talking to her, that the sorrowful element was absent.

My friend’s prophecy about himself proved to be only too true.  Though his mood grew constantly brighter, so that he sometimes even had a gleam of the joy of living, his illness went in the opposite direction, always toward the worst.

One day I found him lying and watching from his bed—­where he now spent nearly the whole day—­my little Anton, who had “made a steamboat” out of his old violin-case—­of which the lid was gone—­and was travelling with it on the floor, touching at foreign ports.  When I came up to the bed, David told me, smiling, that he had been at home in Nordland playing on the beach again.

My wife had, meantime, become more and more his sick-nurse.  She was with him two or three times a day, and sat at his bedside.  He often held her hand, or asked her to read him something out of his old Bible.  The portions he chose were generally those in which the Old Testament speaks of love and lovers.  He dwelt especially on the story of Jacob and Rachel.