"Yes," replied she; "and it often has its influence on the rest. To be sure, in this instance I cannot see how. It is a great mercy though, that I can see what I do. Why should I ask more?"
We peered about us; but we felt convinced that the boys were not in the ravine. What I had last said seemed to absorb Stina.
"What did you think about the snow-fall?" asked she, softly, the next time we were thrown together.
"I will tell you. Shortly before we came out into the park, Fru Atlung had been saying to me that the hope of immortality descended from heaven on our lives, just as hushed, white, and soft as the snow on the naked earth"—
"Oh, how beautiful!" interposed Stina.
"And so I thought when the shock came, and the whole forest trembled, and the snow fell from the trees with the sound of thunder,—now do not be angry,—that in the same way the hope of immortality had fallen from the mother of the boys, and you and all of us, in our great anxiety for the lives of the little fellows. We rushed about in sorrow and lamentation, and some of us in ill-concealed frenzy, lest the boys had received a call from the other life, or lest some occurrence here had led them to the brink of eternity."
"O my God, yes!"
"Now we have had this hope of immortality hanging over us for many thousand years, for it is older, much older than Christianity; and we have progressed no farther than this."
"Oh, you are right! Yes, you are a thousand times right! Think of it!" she exclaimed, and walked on in silent brooding.
"You said before that I was hard toward you, and then I had done nothing but remind you of the belief in immortality you had taught the boys."