"I feel such a need of weeping," he said.

Then he looked up and smiled. "Is it Easter now?" he asked.

"What do you mean by now?"

"It can be called Easter, when the dead rise again," he continued.
Thereupon, as if they had been intimate many years, he began to
tell her about the Spirit of Fasting and of his revolt against her
rule.

"It is Easter now, and the end of her reign," she said.

But when he realized that Edith was sitting there and caressing
him, he had to weep again. He needed so much to weep. All the
distrust of life which misfortunes had brought to the little
Värmland boy needed tears to wash it away. Distrust that love and
joy, beauty and strength blossomed on the earth, distrust in
himself, all must go, all did go, for if was Easter; the dead lived
and the Spirit of Fasting would never again _come into power_.




THE LEGEND OF THE BIRD'S NEST

Hatto the hermit stood in the wilderness and prayed to God. A storm
was raging, and his long beard and matted hair waved about him like
weather-beaten tufts of grass on the summit of an old ruin. But he
did not push his hair out of his eyes, nor did he tuck his beard