With a staggering step, as if he were drunk, he plunged into the wood, and pressed his throbbing head against a tree, that he thus might by degrees recover himself. He then directed his course toward the village. His way led him across the solitary church-yard, where he remained standing with bare head at the foot of a crucifix, and said:—“Here, before the image of the Crucified One, Rosa gave me her word that she would remain true to me, and wait for my return. Sorrow overwhelmed us; upon this bench fell our tears; in deep grief she received the gold cross, my dearly purchased pledge of love. Poor beloved one! Perhaps now I stand by thy grave!”
With this sorrowful observation he sank motionless upon the bench, where he long continued sitting, as if unconscious. His eye wandered over the church-yard, and the small mounds of earth which covered the freshest graves. It grieved him to see how many of the wooden crosses were fallen with age, without the hand of a child troubling itself to raise again these memorials in a father’s or a mother’s place of rest. His parents, too, slept here under the earth, but who could show him the spot which their graves occupied?
In this manner he sat long, sunk in gloomy reverie; the unfathomable eternity weighed heavily on his soul, when a human step awoke him out of his dreams. It was the old grave-digger, who, with his spade on his shoulder, came along by the church-yard wall. Misery and indigence might be read in his whole exterior: his back was bent, and through his constant labor with the spade had become crooked; his hair was white, and wrinkles ploughed his brow; though strength and spirit still spoke in his eye.
The traveler recognized at the first glance Lauw—his rival, and would have willingly sprung toward him; but the bitterly disappointed hopes which he had already experienced held him back, and inspired him with a resolve to say nothing, but to see whether Lauw would know him again.
The grave-digger remained standing some paces from him, contemplated him awhile with common curiosity, and then began to mark out a long square with his spade, and to prepare a new grave. From time to time, however, he continued to cast stolen glances at the man who sat before him on the bench, and a secret melancholy joy gleamed in his eyes. The traveler, who deceived himself as to the expression in the grave-digger’s countenance, felt his heart begin to beat, and expected that Lauw would come forward and name his name.
But the grave-digger still continued to look him sharply in the face, and then put his hand into his coat-pocket. He drew out a little old book, bound in dirty parchment, to which was attached a strap with a lead pencil. He turned round and appeared to write something in the book.
This action, accompanied by a triumphant glance, astonished the stranger so much that he stood up, advanced to the grave-digger, and asked him in surprise, “What do you write in your book?”
“That is my affair,” answered Lauw Stevens; “for a confounded long time there has stood a vacant place in my list: I make a cross by your name.”
“You know me, then?” exclaimed the traveler, with the liveliest joy.
“Know you?” answered the grave-digger, jeeringly; “that I cannot exactly say; I only remember, as if it were yesterday, that a jealous fellow flung me into the brook, and nearly drowned me, because the wainwright’s Rosa loved me. Since that time many an Easter taper has burnt—”