"The boy will have seen his dear father, and will now be comforted," she said.
"Knutty will have seen her Englishman, and will now raise her old head again," she said.
"Ah, how I hope and hope he was there to receive them when they got back to the Gaard," she said.
"And now I shall see him, and the joy of reunion will be mine," she said.
But in the midst of her happy thoughts and yearnings, she did not forget those two lonely compatriots and that silent companion in the bedroom of the Skyds-station.
"My poor strangers," she said, "we will not forsake you."
They had come to the place where the sudden break in the valley had cheered them during that terrible drive of the morning.
"Yes," thought Katharine, "that gave us hope this morning. I should recognise this spot anywhere on earth. It was here I began to have a strong belief that it could not be he lying dead at the Skyds-station."
"Oh," she thought, with a shudder, "if it had been he!—if it had been he!"