Another of our friends, Lieutenant Bertel, fought at the duke's side all day, and was the one who offered him his horse. We shall see, by-and-by, that the duke did not forget this service. Bertel, like Larsson, was hotly engaged in the battle, but, less fortunate than the latter, received several wounds, and was finally borne along in the stream of fugitives to Arensberg. Almost without knowing how, he found himself the next day far from the battlefield, and proceeded with the remnant of the duke's army to Mentz.
CHAPTER VII.
THE LOST SON.
It is Epiphany, in 1635, thus in mid-winter. In Aron Bertila's "stuga,"* at Storkyro, a large fire of pine logs crackled on the spacious hearth, for at that time heavy forests still grew around the fertile fields. Outside rages a snow-storm, with a heavy blast; the wolves howl on the ice of the stream; the famished lynx prowls around to find shelter. It is Twelfth-day evening, an hour or two after twilight. The Storkyro peasant king sits in his high-backed chair, at a short distance from the hearth, listening with scattered thoughts to his daughter Meri, who by the firelight reads aloud a chapter of Agricola's Finnish New Testament, for at that period the whole Bible had not been translated into the Finnish tongue. Bertila has grown very old since we last met him, then still vigorous in his old age. The great ideas that constantly revolve in his bald head give him no peace, and yet these plans are now completely shattered by the king's death, like fragments from a shipwreck floating around on the stormy billows of a dark sea. Strong souls like his generally succumb only by destroying themselves. All the changes and misfortunes of his turbulent life had not been able to break his iron will; but grief over a ruined hope, the vain attempt to reconstruct the vanished castles in the air, and the sorrow of seeing his own children themselves tear down his work, all this gnawed like a vulture upon his inner life. A single thought had made him twenty years older in two years, and this idea was presumptuous even to madness.
* A large room, filling the entire house space with the exception of one or two small chambers. Sleeping bunks are arranged round the walls. The later peasants' houses have more rooms.
"Why is not one of my own family at this moment King of Sweden?" Thus it ran.
At times Meri raises her mild blue eyes from the Holy Book and regards her old father with anxious looks. She, too, looks older; the quiet sorrow lies like the autumn over green groves; it neither breaks or kills, but makes the fresh leaves wither on the tree of life. Meri's glance is full of peace and submission. The thought that shines forth from her soul like a sun at its setting, is none other than this:
"Beyond the grave I shall again meet the joy of my heart, and then he will no longer wear an earthly crown."
Near her, to the left, sits old Larsson, short and stout like his jovial son. His good-natured, hearty face has for a time assumed a more solemn expression, as he listens to the reading of the sacred book. His hands are folded as in prayer, and now and then he stirs the fire a little, with friendly attention, so that Meri can see better.
Behind him in a devotional attitude sit some of the field hands; and this group, illuminated by the reflection of the fire, is completed by a purring grey cat, and a large shaggy watch-dog, curled up under Meri's feet, to which he seems proud to serve as a footstool.