And his maiden met him at the gate;—
‘Now thou art mine,’ quoth John.
Thus was Sir John made happy for life,
And the maiden became his wedded wife.
‘I knew I should have her,’ quoth John.
‘Put on helmets of gold, to follow Sir John.’”
“Come, come! Jan!” growled old Torgensen, “hold your saucy tongue; Svensen was a better man than you will ever be in a year of Sundays. And you, you grinning flirts,”—to the servant-girls, with whom Master Jan was an especial favourite, and upon whom the application was by no means lost—“get along with you, and mind your own business,—as if you had nothing to do, on such a morning as this, but to listen to such fooleries! Be off with you, I say!”
In the meanwhile the Parson and Birger,—who, by the way, hardly recognised each other in their gala habits, for the one was habited, in honour of the occasion, in the black dress of an English clergyman, while the other, with his sword clinking by his side, blazed in all the blue and yellow splendour of the Swedish guard,—took up their old position at the lich gate of the church; one as before balancing on the stocks, the other astride on the dwarf wall, glad to be out of the din of preparation. It was not a happy day for any of them, for it was the last day of the expedition, which every member of it had enjoyed so thoroughly;—Birger’s leave of absence was running to an end, and the two Englishmen had taken passage with young Torgensen to the Haabet. They were to sail—so Torgensen said—that night; but, as it was quite certain that, before that time, the whole crew would be drunk, in honour of their young mistress, this probably meant to-morrow. Still, to-morrow was to be the final break-up of the party; and Tom had been philosophizing, with tears in his eyes, on the transitory nature of human pleasures; and Torkel, bridegroom as he was, would willingly have postponed his wedding if he could have prolonged the expedition,—at least, so Lota had told him the evening before, and he did not look as if he was speaking the truth when he denied it.
Neither of the friends felt much inclined for conversation. They were natives of different parts of the world; their courses from that point lay in opposite directions; the chances were very much against their meeting again, and, though their acquaintance had not been of very long duration, so far as time is concerned, one week’s campaign in the wild forest does more towards ripening an intimacy than a year of ordinary life.
In the meanwhile the time passed on, and the early peal rang out, and the groups began to collect as before in the church-yard, and the lake to be dotted with boats, all pulling or sailing from its remoter bays and islets to the church, as a common centre. Here and there a party, as before, was occupied round a grave, pulling up the overgrown convolvulus and trimming the withering leaves of the lilies. By and by a bugle sounded a call, and a couple of fiddles from one of the nearest boats struck up a polka.