Hjerrild bent down to catch his words if he wished to say anything.
“You are very good,” Niels whispered, “but”—and he shook his head decisively.
The room was still a long time except for the peasant lad’s everlasting “Hah-ho!” hammering the hours to pieces.
Hjerrild rose. “Good-by, Lyhne,” he said. “After all, it is a noble death to die for our poor country.”
“Yes,” said Niels, “and yet this is not the way we dreamed of doing our part that time long, long ago.”
Hjerrild left him. When he came into his own room, he stood a long while by the window looking up at the stars.
“If I were God,“ he said under his breath, and in his thoughts he continued, “I would much rather save the man who was not converted at the last moment.”
The pain in Niels’s wound grew more and more intense; it tore and clutched at his breast, it persisted without mercy. What a relief it would have been if he had had a god to whom he could have moaned and prayed!
Toward morning he grew delirious, the inflammation was progressing rapidly.