"What the heart desires, the body can endure," she answered in an earnest tone. "My grief will be bitterer in your absence than all the tortures which may attend me when I am near you. Let me go with you," and she seized my hand, and clung to it with affectionate tenacity.
"It is impossible," I answered. "In a short time after I am gone, you will think of me no longer, and selecting from your countrymen one whose feelings may sympathise with your own, you will pass your days in happiness, and go to your grave in peace."
The young girl rose to her feet, for she had hitherto sat on the ground, or retained a kneeling position; and taking the ring, I have casually alluded to, from her finger, she said in her native tongue;
"The great and the humble, the rich and poor, feel alike, for God has made no distinction between the peasant girl's deep affections and those of a queen. My father's name and family will end with me, but let my memory live with you."
She placed the ring upon my finger. She wept not, and not a sigh escaped her; but her whole frame trembled with excess of feeling.
"You think," I exclaimed, "that I reverence not your love, and deem your affectionate and noble heart worthy of my acceptance; but you know not the false position in which I stand, or you would favour that apparent apathy which wounds my soul. Had it been in my destiny, I could have dwelt for ever among these mountains, with no other minister to my love than your own self; but to take you hence to England, and refuse you the cheerfulness and honourable endearments of wedlock, is to humiliate my own conscience, and covet the curse of God in your hatred."
I had scarcely spoken, when a flash of light shot across the sky, and before the girl had even ceased to start at the sight, the long, loud roar of a gun succeeded. I understood the signal. The token of a sincerely cherished, and steadfast friendship, I had worn, since I left England, a valuable ring, and removing it from my finger, I took Gunilda's hand and replaced her gift with mine. Gunilda held up her hand before her for some minutes, without the utterance of a word, and gazed on the brilliant jewel, then allowing her hand to fall by her side, burst into a passionate flood of tears.
Again, a sudden gleam of light glanced through the forest, and, a moment after, the booming of another gun rolled away down the valleys, and over the rocks, with a faint, and then a loudly reviving echo.
"Good bye, Gunilda," I said. She spoke not, nor moved; but her shoulders shook with a convulsive heaving.
"Will you not shake hands with me?" I asked, my voice almost indistinct with emotion. Still, she spoke not. I kneeled down, for Gunilda had reseated herself near her mother's grave, and raising her hand, I took it in mine, and pressed it. I felt the pressure returned, and allowing her small passive hand to fall gently again in her lap, I rose.