It was otherwise with Sven Elversson himself. Each day he went to this new task of his with a strange delight. Every hour of it gave him more peace, more calm of mind. He felt a lightness of heart, a happiness, that he could not express, but the reflection of it shone in his face.
Not the joy of love, not the noblest deed, no word of praise could have given him the inner security he felt now, since he had taken the body of a dead English seaman on the Naiad under his protection.
He could not understand how it had come about, for it was no great heroic deed he had done. The risk, the chance that Olaus would throw him overboard together with the dead, had not been great. Nevertheless, he felt that the great change had come, and that after this he could once more dare to feel happy. Now for the first time he began to think of a future that might hold days and years of happiness for him.
There was a strength in him now that he had not suspected before. He hardly needed sleep. His heart beat so easily, so untroubled; he felt it a joy to be alive.
"Oh, but I was miserable indeed before," he thought. "Every breath was an effort to me then. I did not know what life was."
That he found himself regarded more kindly by his fellows than before was, of course, an added satisfaction; but he thought at the same time that even if they had continued to hate him, it could not have made him feel unhappy now. He was freed, he had atoned.
The day after the burial he was to go back to Hånger. "I shall go back to Sigrun as a new man," he thought. For her sake more than all else his deliverance was a joy to him. What a glorious fullness of happiness awaited them now!
Standing there in the churchyard, following the service, he thought with emotion of these men who had given their lives for their country, but his joy was not lost for that. He saw that the former Pastor of Applum, Edward Rhånge, had also come to be present at this celebration for the dead. For a moment he felt anxious and uneasy, but it passed off at once, and his heart beat again with the same wonderful lightness as before.
"That man is my friend," he thought. "Who could have given me so great a gift as he has?"
When the burial was over, and the last hymn had been sung, Rhånge stepped forward to the grave to speak.