The Treasure

by Selma Lagerlöf

"Yes, dear sister," said Elsalill; "you may be sure I will."

"Then farewell, Elsalill," said the dead girl. "I have only one more thing to ask of you. And it is that you be not too angry with me for this thing."

"Wherefore do you bid me farewell?" said Elsalill. "I will gladly come every evening and help you."

"No, there is no need for you to come after this evening," said the dead girl. "I have good hope that tonight you will give me such help that my mission will now be ended."

As they spoke thus Elsalill was already leaning over her work. All was still for a while, but then she felt a light breath on her forehead, as when the dead girl had come to her in Torarin's cabin. She looked up and saw that she was alone. Then she knew what it was that had felt like a faint breeze upon her face, and said to herself: "My dead foster sister has kissed my forehead before she parted from me."

Elsalill now turned to her work and finished it. She rinsed out all the bowls and tankards and dried them. Then she looked in the hatch whether any more had been set in there, and finding none she stood at the hatch and looked out into the tavern.

It was an hour of the day when there was usually little custom in the cellars. The hostess was absent from her bar and none of her tapsters was to be seen in the room. The place was empty, save for three men, who sat at the end of a long table. They were guests, but they seemed well at their ease, for one of them, who had emptied his tankard, went to the bar, filled it from one of the great tuns of ale and wine that stood there, and sat down again to drink.

Elsalill felt as though she had come here from a strange world. Her thoughts were with her dead foster sister, and she could not clearly take in what she saw. It was a long while before she was aware that the three men at the table were well known and dear to her. For they who sat there were none other than Sir Archie and his two friends Sir Reginald and Sir Philip.

For some days past Sir Archie had not visited Elsalill, and she was glad to see him. She was on the point of calling to him that she was there at hand; but then the thought came to her, how strange it was that he had ceased to visit her, and she kept silence. "Maybe his fancy has turned to another," thought Elsalill. "Maybe it is of her he is thinking."

For Sir Archie sat a little apart from the others. He was silent and gazed steadily before him, without touching his drink. He took no part in the talk, and when his friends addressed a word to him, he was seldom at the pains to make them an answer.