Arrived there, he bends down and pats the turf, as one lightly caresses the blanket under which a sick friend is lying. Then he takes out a pack of cards and sits down beside the grave.
“He is so lonely outside here, Johan Fredrik. He must long sometimes for a game.”
“It is a sin and a shame that such a man shall lie here,” says the great bear-hunter, Anders Fuchs, and sits down at his side.
But little Ruster, the flute-player, speaks with broken voice, while the tears run from his small red eyes.
“Next to you, colonel, next to you he was the finest man I have ever known.”
These three worthy men sit round the grave and deal the cards seriously and with zeal.
I look out over the world, I see many graves. There rest the mighty ones of the earth, weighed down by marble. Funeral marches thunder over them. Standards are sunk over those graves. I see the graves of those who have been much loved. Flowers, wet with tears, caressed with kisses, rest lightly on their green sods. I see forgotten graves, arrogant graves, lying resting-places, and others which say nothing, but never before did I see the right-bower and the joker with the bells in his cap offered as entertainment to a grave’s occupant.
“Johan Fredrik has won,” says the colonel, proudly. “Did I not know it? I taught him to play. Yes, now we are dead, we three, and he alone alive.”
Thereupon he gathers together the cards, rises, and goes, followed by the others, back to Ekeby.