From a Swedish Homestead

by Selma Lagerlöf

III

Raglanda was the name of a parish in the north of East Vermland, near the borders of Dalarne, where the Dean had a large house, but the pastor only a small and poor one. But poor as they were at the small parsonage, they had been charitable enough to adopt a poor girl. She was a little girl, Ingrid by name, and she had come to the parsonage when she was thirteen years old.

The pastor had accidentally seen her at a fair, where she sat crying outside the tent of some acrobats. He had stopped and asked her why she was crying, and she had told him that her blind grandfather was dead, and that she had no relatives left. She now travelled with a couple of acrobats, and they were good to her, but she cried because she was so stupid that she could never learn to dance on the tight-rope and help to earn any money.

There was a sorrowful grace over the child which touched the pastor's heart. He said at once to himself that he could not allow such a little creature to go to the bad amongst these wandering tramps. He went into the tent, where he saw Mr. and Mrs. Blomgren, and offered to take the child home with him. The old acrobats began to weep, and said that although the girl was entirely unfitted for the profession, they would so very much like to keep her; but at the same time they thought she would be happier in a real home with people who lived in the same place all the year round, and therefore they were willing to give her up to the pastor if he would only promise them that she should be like one of his own children.

This he had promised, and from that time the young girl had lived at the parsonage. She was a quiet, gentle child, full of love and tender care for those around her. At first her adopted parents loved her very dearly, but as she grew older she developed a strong inclination to lose herself in dreams and fancies. She lived in a world of visions, and in the middle of the day she could let her work fall and be lost in dreams. But the pastor's wife, who was a clever and hard-working woman, did not approve of this. She found fault with the young girl for being lazy and slow, and tormented her by her severity so that she became timid and unhappy.

When she had completed her nineteenth year, she fell dangerously ill. They did not quite know what was the matter with her, for this happened long ago, when there was no doctor at Raglanda, but the girl was very ill. They soon saw she was so ill that she could not live.

She herself did nothing but pray to God that He would take her away from this world. She would so like to die, she said.

Then it seemed as if our Lord would try whether she was in earnest. One night she felt that she grew stiff and cold all over her body, and a heavy lethargy fell upon her. 'I think this must be death,' she said to herself.

But the strange thing was that she did not quite lose consciousness. She knew that she lay as if she were dead, knew that they wrapped her in her shroud and laid her in her coffin, but she felt no fear of being buried, although she was still alive. She had but the one thought that she was happy because she was about to die and leave this troublesome life.