I nodded.
"You will find—a pawnbroker's check—in my vest pocket," he continued. "The address is—is—on it. Redeem it. It is a ring. Send it—to—to the Countess von Brehm—with—with—my compliments," he finished with a groan.
We spent several hours in silence. About three o'clock the doctor paid a brief visit; and I read in his face that the end was near. The first sunbeams stole through the closed shutters and scattered little quivering fragments of light upon the carpet. A deep stillness reigned about us. As I sat watching the defaced ruin of what had been, to me at least, one of the noblest forms which a human spirit ever inhabited, the past moved in a vivid retrospect before my eye, and many strange reflections thronged upon me. Presently Dannevig called me and I stood again bowing over him.
"When you—bury me," he said in a broken whisper. "Carry my—cross of—Dannebrog—on a cushion after me." And again after a moment's pause: "I have—made a—nice mess of it, haven t I? I—I—think it would—have—have been better for—me, if—I had been—somebody else."
Within an hour he was dead. Myself and two policemen followed him to the grave; and the cross of Dannebrog, with a much soiled red ribbon, was carried on a velvet cushion after his coffin.
MABEL AND I.
(A PHILOSOPHICAL FAIRY TALE.)
"I want to see things as they are," said I to Mabel.