The news came to her lying and fading in emulation with the
rootless birches. "Petter Nord, with whom you played one summer
day, is in the graveyard waiting for you. Petter Nord, whom your
uncle has frightened out of his senses, cannot leave the graveyard
until your flower-decked coffin comes to fetch him."

The girl opened her eyes as if to look at the world once more. She
sent a message to Petter Nord. She was angry at his mad pranks. Why
could she not die in peace? She had never wished that he should
have any pangs of conscience for her sake.

The bearer of the message came back without Petter Nord. He could
not come. The wall was too high and the gate too strong. There was
only one who could free him.

During those days they thought of nothing else in the little town.
"He is there; he is there still," they told one another every day.
"Is he mad?" they asked most often, and some who had talked with
him answered that he certainly would be when "she" came. But they
were exceedingly proud of that martyr to love who gave a glory to
the town. The poor took him food. The rich stole up on the mountain
to catch a glimpse of him.

But Edith, who could not move, who lay helpless and dying, she who
had so much time to think, with what was she occupying herself?
What thoughts revolved in her brain day and night? Oh, Petter Nord,
Petter Nord! Must she always see before her the man who loved her,
who was losing his mind for her sake, who really, actually was in
the graveyard waiting for her coffin.