It is a newly-planted wood.  Young firs have been forced to take root in the clefts between the granite blocks.  Their tough roots have bored down like sharp wedges into the fissures and crevices.  It was very well for a while; the young trees shot up like spires, and the roots bored down into the granite.  But at last they could go no further, and then the wood was filled with an ill-concealed peevishness.  It wished to go high, but also deep.  After the way down had been closed to it, it felt that life was not worth living.  Every spring it was ready to throw off the burden of life in its discouragement.  During the summer when Edith was dying, the young wood was quite brown.  High above the town of flowers stood a gloomy row of dying trees.

But up on the mountain it is not all gloom and the agony of death.  As one walks between the brown trees, in such distress that one is ready to die, one catches glimpses of green trees.  The perfume of flowers fills the air; the song of birds exults and calls.  Then thoughts rise of the sleeping forest and of the paradise of the fairy-tale, encircled by thorny thickets.  And when one comes at last to the green, to the flower fragrance, to the song of the birds, one sees that it is the hidden graveyard of the little town.

The home of the dead lies in an earth-filled hollow in the mountain plateau.  And there, within the grey stone walls, the knowledge and weariness of life end.  Lilacs stand at the entrance, bending under heavy clusters.  Lindens and beeches spread a lofty arch of luxuriant growth over the whole place.  Jasmines and roses blossom freely in that consecrated earth.  Over the big old tombstones creep vines of ivy and periwinkle.

There is a corner where the pine-trees grow mast-high.  Does it not seem as if the young wood outside ought to be ashamed at the sight of them?  And there are hedges there, quite grown beyond their keeper’s hands, blooming and sending forth shoots without thought of shears or knife.

The town now has a new burial-place, to which the dead can come without special trouble.  It was a weary way for them to be carried up in winter, when the steep wood-paths are covered with ice, and the steps slippery and covered with snow.  The coffin creaked; the bearers panted; the old clergyman leaned heavily on the sexton and the grave-digger.  Now no one has to be buried up there who does not ask it.

The graves are not beautiful.  There are few who know how to make the resting-place of the dead attractive.  But the fresh green sheds its peace and beauty over them all.  It is strangely solemn to know that those who are buried are glad to lie there.  The living who go up after a day hot with work, go there as among friends.  Those who sleep have also loved the lofty trees and the stillness.

If a stranger comes up there, they do not tell him of death and loss; they sit down on the big slabs of stone, on the broad burgomaster tombs, and tell him about Petter Nord, the Vaermland boy, and of his love.  The story seems fitting to be told up here, where death has lost its terrors.  The consecrated earth seems to rejoice at having also been the scene of awakened happiness and new-born life.