O Love, thou art indeed eternal!
CHAPTER XIX
THE BROOM-GIRL
No one knows the place in the lee of the mountain where the pines grow thickest and deep layers of moss cover the ground. How should any one know it? No man’s foot has ever trodden it before; no man’s tongue has given it a name. No path leads to that hidden spot. It is the most solitary tract in the forest, and now thousands of people are looking for it.
What an endless procession of seekers! They would fill the Bro church,—not only Bro, but Löfviks and Svartsjö.
All who live near the road rush out and ask, “Has anything happened? Is the enemy upon us? Where are you going? Tell us where.”
“We are searching,” they answer. “We have been searching for two days. We shall go on to-day; but afterwards we can do no more. We are going to look through the Björne wood and the firclad heights west of Ekeby.”
It was from Nygård, a poor district far away among the eastern mountains, the procession had first started. The beautiful girl with the heavy, black hair and the red cheeks had disappeared a week before. The broom-girl, to whom Gösta Berling had wished to engage himself, had been lost in the great forests. No one had seen her for a week.