The children wrote constantly, and begged her to come out to them; but this she did not wish. She didn't want to see the land that had taken them from her. She was angry with it. "It's foolish of me, perhaps, that I do not like that land which has been so good for them," said she. "But I don't want to see it."
She never thought of anything but the children, and of this—that they must needs have gone. When summer came, she led the cow out to graze in the big swamp. All day she would sit on the edge of the swamp, her hands in her lap; and on the way home she would say: "You see, Rödlinna, if there had been large, rich fields here, in place of these barren swamps, then there would have been no need for them to leave."
She could become furious with the swamp which spread out so big, and did no good. She could sit and talk about how it was the swamp's fault that the children had left her.
This last evening she had been more trembly and feeble than ever before. She could not even do the milking. She had leaned against the manger and talked about two strangers who had been to see her, and had asked if they might buy the swamp. They wanted to drain it, and sow and raise grain on it. This had made her both anxious and glad. "Do you hear, Rödlinna," she had said, "do you hear they said that grain can grow on the swamp? Now I shall write to the children to come home. Now they'll not have to stay away any longer; for now they can get their bread here at home." It was this that she had gone into the cabin to do—
The boy heard no more of what the old cow said. He had opened the cowhouse door and gone across the yard, and in to the dead whom he had but lately been so afraid of.
It was not so poor in the cabin as he had expected. It was well supplied with the sort of things one generally finds among those who have relatives in America. In a corner there was an American rocking chair; on the table before the window lay a brocaded plush cover; there was a pretty spread on the bed; on the walls, in carved-wood frames, hung the photographs of the children and grandchildren who had gone away; on the bureau stood high vases and a couple of candlesticks, with thick, spiral candles in them.
The boy searched for a matchbox and lighted these candles, not because he needed more light than he already had; but because he thought that this was one way to honour the dead.
Then he went up to her, closed her eyes, folded her hands across her breast, and stroked back the thin gray hair from her face.
He thought no more about being afraid of her. He was so deeply grieved because she had been forced to live out her old age in loneliness and longing. He, at least, would watch over her dead body this night.
He hunted up the psalm book, and seated himself to read a couple of psalms in an undertone. But in the middle of the reading he paused—because he had begun to think about his mother and father.