It was no less a personage than Assendorff, sometime horsetrainer in the imperial stables at St. Petersburg, who found Sabine more dead than alive on the second morning after her disappearance.

"Hey!" he thundered with his harsh bass voice, so that an echo passed across the silent waters. "Is that you, you wretch?"

He sat high up on the steep Maiden's Cliff, the special site he had chosen where he, in majestic surroundings and unbothered by stupid peasants, could reflect upon his life and remember the splendid days of his youth in the city of the czar. His nets and his fine new fish-trap had already been inspected, although the sun had scarcely had time to rub the sleep out of its eyes. He had just sat down at this favorite place of his, the smooth slab on the cliff's outermost brink---where he liked to imagine that the lovesick maiden of the story had stood before she threw herself into the depths---and was leisurely filling his pipe, when he caught sight of a neatly painted green-bottomed boat which drifted splashing against the stones of the beach. He peered curiously at the boat and saw a miserable little person lying curled up on its bottom. He realized immediately who it was. He lived as a lodger in the house of the old woman named Olsbom, and the sharp-nosed old witch of course   [p. 100]   knew about everything that took place in the parish. She had hardly got inside the door yesterday evening, barely giving herself enough time to babble the prayer which is prescribed for disasters and onslaughts of the foe, before everything she had heard in Matvej Olkkonen's store came rattling out of her mouth like so many peas. Imagine, the elegant young lady from Lintula had run away! Now they were making a careful search for her throughout the whole parish, and Lintula's master and mistress were beside themselves with fright. Broiling his fish in the embers on the open fireplace, Assendorff pretended he was not a bit concerned about the woman's chatter, but actually he listened greedily to every word, rejoicing in the news that things had gone wrong for the rich and haughty. He had been a coachman at Lintula for several years during the count's time, and they had never had a coachman like him there since, Assendorff thought. Instead of showing him due respect, they threw him out in a rather ungentle way, just because he had happened to get drunk when the countess wanted to ride into the city. He certainly had a crow to pick with Lintula, no mistake about it.

No answer came from the boat. He sat gazing at the miserable sight for a while. "The little wretch is lying there in her shift and nothing more," he thought, touched against his will by the child's pitiful situation. "Two nights on the lake and not a speck of food in the boat---I don't think I'd like to try something like that myself. Not even a rag to cover herself with. No, womenfolk can't stand that kind of thing." Like most irascible and unaccommodating persons, he had a certain weakness for children and young people. He wrinkled his bushy eyebrows and yelled with the full force of his lungs: "Are you cold? Are you hungry? Do you want some brandy?"

  [p. 101]  

There was nothing left for him to do but to stuff his pipe into his pocket unlit; he would have to climb down and see whether the little creature had given up the ghost.

When Sabine awoke from her sluggish and heavy doze, she saw a great red-bearded face close up to hers, and heard a mighty growling which filled her with a vast sense of security. She was not at all afraid. There was something about Assendorff which resembled a kindly old thunderbolt. She looked curiously at his tremendous red beard, his small squinting eyes, and his peculiar ragged tunic. She did not put up any opposition when, muttering and swearing to himself, he picked her up in his arms and resolutely transferred her to his own rickety boat. He gave the boat from Lintula an ill-tempered kick, spat three times, and said: "May the devil take you!" Then Sabine laughed. She thought it sounded funny.

Assendorff was pleased by the girl's laughter. She wasn't nervous by nature, that was good. He pushed his fish to one side and put the girl on the bottom of the boat.

"There's nobody at Lintula who knows about horses now," he declared as he lit his pipe. "It was different in my day. 'When Assendorff came into the stables in the morning, every little foal knew that Our Lord had arrived."

Sabine sat up in the boat straight as a stick. What was that he said? He was talking about the horses at Lintula. Lady Macbeth's beautiful head seemed to rise up over the edge of the boat. She looked at Sabine with her sad eyes.

"Then you must know Lady Macbeth," she blurted out in breathless eagerness. All her exhaustion had vanished in a flash. Her heart pounded in her breast.

"Ha, ha," Assendorff rumbled. "I just ask you: who knows Lady Macbeth if old Assendorff doesn't? Did I train her or didn't I? I held her in my arms when she was no   [p. 102]   bigger than a bundle. I bottle-fed her as if she were my own infant. I have counted the hairs on her head, that's God's own truth."

He riveted his eyes on Sabine in order really to show her that she was not talking to a liar.

His effort was superfluous. Sabine trusted in Assendorff as she would in God the Father. She melted like wax at the mere thought that this red-bearded being had held Lady Macbeth in his arms when she was no bigger than a little bundle.

"Do you think that Lady Macbeth can cry?" Sabine asked and looked him straight in the eye. Her small hands were tightly clenched.

"No," said Assendorff. "That's something people imagine. What horses do is sigh. They sigh so heavily that your ears turn cold, in case you've done something wrong. Such a fine mare as Lady Macbeth, for example, has sensitive feelings, you know. That's what I've always said---you have to be a lady's man to get along with a mare. That's why I had such success in St. Petersburg."

Assendorff slapped his knees and let go a mighty laugh in his rusty bass voice. He told one story after another, for the most part stories of horses and women and that splendid fellow Assendorff who went around in riding boots and wore a fine livery.

But little Sabine had gone to sleep. Before she fell into slumber, she heard Lady Macbeth sighing. She sighed more heavily than any human can, and somehow Sabine got the idea that Lady Macbeth had a nightcap on her head with small silk ribbons tied beneath her chin, and she had to laugh to herself because it looked so funny and Lady Macbeth was exactly like the nice old troll woman in the big yellow storybook, the troll woman whom she had often impersonated,   [p. 103]   to Joachim's delight. Stretching out happily in the dirty boat, she fell asleep.

The sun climbed higher and higher in the sky, and the dream world of the morning, filled with presentiment, disappeared with its unspoken secrets beyond the holms. Clouds from the abode of unrest and change came sailing past, breezes swept over the quiet straits, and away in the edge of the reeds the bright-colored didapper plunged soundlessly into the depths.

Side by side with his own noisy voice, Assendorff's keen old ear caught the light and rhythmic sound of approaching oars. Swift and silent as a water bird, he made his boat glide into the narrow channel east of the Maiden's Cliff, and then went full steam ahead. The devil take him if he let the girl fall into the enemy's hands!

He took an irrevocable decision to help the girl in her flight. A little cockroach like her could always be hidden in some cranny or other. He looked fiercely in every direction, muttering half aloud to some invisible and garrulous opponent: "If she doesn't want to, then she doesn't want to! And that's all there is to it!" He felt in very high spirits indeed. No matter how you look at it, it was a joy for a fellow with the soul of a highwayman to have the chance of tricking authority somehow. He rowed so hard his horny fists grew hot. The water rushed and sang at the bow. Sabine lay lost in deep slumber while the strange beaches and the strange farms on their gentle knolls amidst the fields glided past, and an ill-tempered horse-lover steered the boat of her life toward freedom's unfamiliar coast.

Assendorff was careful not to tie up at the public beach where old Olsbom was accustomed to moor her boat. If the old battle-axe got wind of the matter, then the news would be spread all over the parish by evening. He had figured out   [p. 104]   a clever plan. He would tie up somewhere near the burial ground which lay on a lonely point of land at the edge of the village. It would not be a long walk from there to Uncle Ungert's cottage. And in the cottage, he had thought, the girl would find sanctuary. Uncle Ungert lived all by himself, except for his cat, and nobody ever came to see him. He would hardly notice that a little girl had come into his house, and if he noticed it, then he would believe that she had always been there. After all, the poor old man was always lost somewhere in his thoughts.

Everything went just the way Assendorff had planned it. The girl was so tired that he had to carry her. The creature didn't weigh any more than a crow. She hadn't had any food, surely. Nobody was in sight. He cut across the burial ground and noticed that a fresh grave had been dug. "The Lampinen's child, Sanni, is going to be buried tomorrow," he thought. "The priest will come to the village. There will be a party, and the old battle-axe will be gone all day long."

But when he stepped into Uncle Ungert's cottage, a stranger was sitting by the window, and Uncle Ungert was not to be seen. The cat rubbed against the stranger's legs in a very friendly fashion, its tail straight up in the air and its evil yellow eyes half closed. Assendorff paid special attention to these facts because the cat disliked people and spent most of its time out in the fields; he himself had a certain respect for the damned animal. He said good morning and laid the girl on the old man's bed. There was nothing else he could do. Of course, he knew who it was who had forced his way in here. It could not be anyone other than the fellow whom Lampinen was said to have brought home with him. What kind of a rascal was he? And what devil had shown him the way to the cottage? It wasn't so far away from Lampinen's, of course, but just the same! What was he prying around   [p. 105]   here for? The more Assendorff thought of the matter, the more suspicious he decided the man was. Gradually he worked himself up into a rage. He drew his mighty frame up to full length, so that his hair touched the ceiling. He stared straight forward and kept swearing softly to himself the whole time. "It's a peculiar kind of people who won't leave others in peace," he muttered into his beard.

Troubled, Myyriäinen stood up.

"I'm sorry if I've disturbed you," he said. "What happened was that I met Uncle Ungert at the churchyard. And we had a few things to talk about. He's very much interested in art. He has some handsome old prints he wanted to show me. Look here, what do you think of them? They're Leonardos, every one."

He laughed in a faintly embarrassed way and handed Assendorff a portrait of the head of Christ, so that he could examine it:

"When you see things like this, you realize just how little you know about art yourself. And how little you know about how a person looks. But you're pleased just the same. Pleased because it exists."

Assendorff could not deny that the man was very agreeable. He was not a little flattered by the fact that such a direct appeal had been made to his understanding of art. Yes, apparently it showed on him that he was something of a cosmopolitan. He spat vigorously in the direction of the hearth, put the picture back on the table, and declared:

"It's not so bad. Although I've seen more beautiful icons, of course. With more colors and things like that."

"Yes," Myyriäinen said. "There are many beautiful old icons, too."

As he spoke, he noticed that the girl had crept up to the table where the soiled old pictures were lying. She stood there in breathless stillness, lost in contemplation of the   [p. 106]   wonderful head of Christ. The vital, beautiful loneliness of the face fascinated her. She could never have dreamt that a thing of such beauty existed in all the world.

"Is that the Savior?" she asked naively.

"Yes," Myyriäinen said, and bent down over her. "Actually, one ought to see the colors. It's a sketch in red crayon. Do you like the picture?"

Sabine did not answer. She quickly directed her dark eyes toward the stranger. A friendly blue glance met hers. With a child's perspicacity she saw everything that was contained in it, the shyness and the melancholy and the strange blue loneliness, and her heart suddenly began to throb. Her legs could hardly hold her up. In order to conceal her confusion, she began to poke through the pictures, pretending that she was studying them. But all her senses were concentrated upon capturing the subtlest vibrations from this strange, strong being who seemed to be related to her, and who filled her with a longing she had never known before.

He put his hand on her shoulder. She was happy. Listening to his deep and pleasant voice, she wished that he would never stop talking to her.

"You understand what is beautiful, I think," said Myyriäinen. "You're lucky to have such eyes."

When he said it, it really seemed to Sabine that she did have eyes which could tell how beautiful everything was. She felt a burning wish to be able to show him something beautiful she herself had discovered. She stared with an apparent intensity at old Leonardo's pictures, but all the while she was frantically searching her memory for something which could give him an idea of what beautiful things she could see. In her haste she could not remember anything save the Little Mermaid, which she had once painted with her favorite colors, in silvery bright gray and dark golden brown, in order to convince herself of how beautiful the   [p. 107]   mermaid really was, although she had been made so ugly in the illustrations to Andersen's fairy tales. But oh, she didn't have her little painting with her! Everything she possessed was back there in the gloomy house to which she would never return, and she realized that she must begin anew with her two empty hands in order to convince him that she had the kind of eyes he thought.

"Do you think that the Little Mermaid is pretty?" she asked hesitatingly.

"I have never seen the Little Mermaid," said Myyriäinen. "But perhaps we'll get to see her some evening down in the river, if we stay on the lookout."

Sabine shook her head energetically.

"She lives in the sea," she said. "People never see her. But I'll paint her for you, and then you'll see how beautiful she is."

"Is that right?" said Myyriäinen. "Then I'll make something beautiful for you, too."

He felt a shy and terribly cold little hand slip into his, and two dark eyes looked up to him with an expression of such boundless gratitude that he almost grew frightened. He thought that he must impress this fact upon his memory---that he had promised to make something beautiful for her; for if he happened to forget it, then he would have committed an unconscious crime against a passionate trust.

"Your hand is like ice," he said. "You aren't cold, are you?"

Sabine did not feel that she was cold. She felt warm and happy. Her cheeks were hot and her heart throbbed within her breast. But still, it seemed to her that her legs were giving way under her and the floor disappeared and the room began to dance around her.

Myyriäinen took her in his arms and put her down on   [p. 108]   Uncle Ungert's hard wooden bed, where an old horse-blanket served as a mattress. He noticed that her clothes were damp, and when he touched her he realized that she had a fever.

Blowing and puffing, Uncle Ungert came in with a bucket of water. He had some coffee beans which he had been preserving for years in a tin can. Now, by heavens, he would make coffee, for now there would be a party in his cottage. He had met someone who possessed wisdom about life and understanding about art. For a moment it seemed to confuse him that a girl was lying on his bed. He put the bucket aside and went forward to look. Sabine had revived, and returned his glance curiously.

"Why yes, it's you," the old man said, and nodded.

Of course, one didn't know what he meant by what he said. Perhaps he thought that it was someone whom he had known a generation ago. At any rate, he seemed to accept it as a natural matter that a little being lay in his bed. He did not take the time to think it over, for now he was going to prepare the coffee, and that was a complicated procedure. You had to hunt up something to roast the beans on, and you had to make a fire, and one thing after another. No one else was allowed to mix into these sublime and mystic proceedings. The water had to be clean, the beans had to be clean, the fire had to be clean. When he offered his guest a beverage, no one save himself was allowed to touch anything needed for its preparation. In every one of its parts, it should come from him, and be mingled with his life-spirit.

Meanwhile, a complicated and low-voiced conversation was taking place between Myyriäinen and Assendorff on the question of what was to be done with the girl. Myyriäinen agreed with Assendorff that, for the time being, they ought to bide their time and let the girl do whatever she wanted to. "A child is a human being too," Assendorff   [p. 109]   said emphatically. The only thing which bothered Myyriäinen was that the girl, judging by appearances, was coming down with a cold. "That won't bother her," said Assendorff, waving the matter away with his hand. "She's tough." It was decided to borrow a nightshirt from Uncle Ungert and to get the girl to bed properly; Assendorff took upon himself the job of hunting up a little brandy for her, so that her breathing could be put in order. And everything should be kept as secret as death. The two men were as excited and eager as schoolboys who are planning some prank or other. The thought that they could be here, taking care of the fine-limbed little girl and getting food for her and having the responsibility for her well-being, appealed to them deeply; their protective instinct was awakened, and at the same time their need for a tender romanticism found satisfaction.

Hardly an hour had passed before Uncle Ungert's coffee was done and Assendorff's fish were broiled and Sabine, all dressed up in a tremendous nightshirt which was carefully patched and so threadbare that it resembled a spider-web, got a hearty gulp of brandy which burned like fire as it ran down her throat, giving her a sensation of buoyant lightness and strength. If poor Ottilia, who had always seen her squeamish daughter picking at her food, had been there to witness what quantities of fish, broiled in the embers, Sabine stuffed into herself, and how she lapped up the hot coffee with it, she wouldn't have believed her eyes. Assendorff gave Myyriäinen a meaningful nod. "Starved," he said in such a whisper that the room rumbled and the cat spat in its fright.

When everything was devoured down to the last crumb, and that devil of a cat had got his share, Assendorff took a ceremonious farewell of the girl. He had one thing and another to take care of in the village, he said. He saluted   [p. 110]   Myyriäinen and made him swear a holy oath of silence one last time.

Uncle Ungert, who was shortsighted, leaned over some yellowed papers which he had taken out of his hiding place. His old fingers trembled. The secret dreams of a shining and adventurous youth arose from these sketches which he had carried with him through two continents, and which he had always thought he would burn before he himself disappeared from the earth. Nothing of his spiritual person should be allowed to stay behind, adding to the litter of the world's trash heaps; he intended to take everything with him into the great transformation. But he had never had the strength to destroy these papers, where the frail and half-obliterated orthography bound his most intimate thoughts and experiences to the material world. He had thought: someday someone will come along who understands me and who feels the way I do. Then I shall read him everything I have written. And afterwards I shall burn it up. In a remarkable way, such a man had come to him now. He had not exchanged many words with the contemplative stranger, whom he chanced to meet in the churchyard where they were digging somebody's grave, before he realized that the moment had come when he would free himself from the last links he had with life.

He knew now that he did not have much time left. But he looked forward to a series of days during which the stranger would sit here with him, while he---slowly and without the least sense of urgency, leaf by leaf---would impart to him what he himself had preserved as the most authentic expressions of his personality. Even if it would be only a matter of days, for him it would be eternity.

He thought he would begin with Leonardo da Vinci.

He had noted down some of the master's deepest words, and because they had meant so much to him in the searching   [p. 111]   days of his youth, he wanted to read them aloud as the only real and true introduction to what he himself had observed about the meaning of life. The old Florentine, because of his all-embracing desire for investigation and his faithful, conscientious attention to details, as well as by the fact that most of what he planned to do remained undone while the noblest of his deeds vanished like a vision---the old Florentine was for Uncle Ungert the essence of man's astounding genius.

He suddenly looked up from his papers, as if he remembered something.

"You, girl," and it was apparently Sabine to whom he spoke, "did you know that Leonardo trembled, yes, one must actually say trembled, when he was going to paint the head of Christ on his picture of the Last Supper? And yet he offered the duke his machines of war. That's the way he was. And he wanted to make a flying machine."

Sabine was quiet as a mouse. She did not want to let the smallest careless word disturb this wonderful thing which was happening to her. But, all the while, she was sending secret little messages to her friend who remained in the room, although she could not see him from where she lay in the bed.

Uncle Ungert read aloud in his weak, trembling voice:

"Where the flame cannot live, there no creature which breathes can live."

"The origin of all our knowledge lies in feeling. 'Where the most feeling is, there is the greatest suffering."

"The deeper knowledge is, the more intense is love."

"If you, oh man, when you contemplate the wondrous creations of nature in my sketches, regard the destruction of my work as a crime, consider then how much greater the crime must be when one robs a human being of his life. Consider too that the body's edifice, which seems such   [p. 112]   perfection to you, is naught in comparison to the soul which resides within this dwelling. For it, of whatsoever sort it may be, is something which at all events comes from God. Consider how unwillingly it departs the body, and that its lament and its sadness cannot be without cause. Thus do not prevent it from inhabiting the body which it has constructed, as long as it will, and do not destroy this life in your deceit and evil. Life is so fair that he who does not truly value it is unworthy of it."

Uncle Ungert was overcome by emotion and could not continue his reading. So many memories pressed in upon him, strangely filled with life. He looked out with his old eyes, in which the dusk was falling, across the floor of his cottage, and there a multitude of phantoms came toward him, with hands outstretched and words that had never been spoken on their lips. "Yes, yes," he mumbled to himself, "there is so much which never gets a chance to live." He remained sitting on his chair, altogether still. Was he sleeping with his eyes open, as they say old horses do, or was he preparing to cross the boundary into death unnoticed?

Myyriäinen went across the floor quietly, in order not to disturb the old man.

He sat down on the edge of the bed beside Sabine. Soon they were involved in a low-voiced conversation. They did not tell one another everything that passed through their minds. Myyriäinen, for example, thought that Uncle Ungert was going to die now, but did not mention it to Sabine. And Sabine thought passionately of the soul's sadness and lament when it must leave the body, but did not mention it to her friend. Instead she said that she was thinking of the Little Mermaid, who had such a boundless longing to become a human being for a single day and to acquire an immortal soul. Now she clearly understood, she said, why the Little Mermaid felt the way she did. If she---Sabine---had not been   [p. 113]   born a human being, then she would long for nothing so much as to become one.

"But do you know," she said in a mysterious whisper, "what can turn a mermaid into a human being?"

Myyriäinen said that he did not know.

Sabine sat up with shining eyes. She threw her arms around his neck and whispered into his ear: "If a son of man loves her."

"Oh," said Myyriäinen. "Now I know what your mermaid looks like. She resembles you."

They both thought this was very funny.

"Do you think I'm pretty?" she asked.

Myyriäinen was careful not to tell her what his opinion was, but in his mind he was surprised at seeing such beauty suddenly come into bloom upon her face.

The very next morning, when Myyriäinen awakened upon his bunk in Lampinen's sauna and sleepily squinted at the sun which shone in through the open door, he began to think about what sort of beautiful thing he was going to make for Sabine. He had a vague memory of having seen something very beautiful in his dreams, it seemed to be some object which he held in his hands and which Sabine was supposed to have, but he could not recall what it was, or even if he had really seen how it looked. "What can I make with my hands?" he thought sadly. "I can't make anything beautiful, I'm absolutely incapable of that, and I can't make anything amusing either."

Then he happened to remember that Sabine was going to paint the Little Mermaid for him, and he decided to go immediately to Matvej Olkkonen's store to see if the storekeeper could get him some paints, it would be nice to surprise Sabine with a paintbox while she was drinking her morning coffee. No doubt she had completely forgotten   [p. 114]   that paints were needed for a painting, too, and that even a mermaid could not be done with dream-paints, in case anyone else was meant to see her. He jumped briskly out of bed, full of eagerness and the desire to get something done. It was a completely new feeling for him to have such a helpless being to think of and to look after. And then there was Uncle Ungert, too. He had awakened from his quiet trance with a remarkable sense of strength and concentration, and padded about his cottage all day long, as snug and comfortable as he could be. But he did not go outdoors, and he put the papers to one side without wanting to pay them any further attention on that day. When evening began to fall, he lay down---without any preparations whatsoever---on an old sheepskin beside the stove, as if it were taken for granted that the girl would sleep in his bed. Myyriäinen thought with tenderness and warmth of the little house which lay hidden and forgotten out there on the knoll in the forest, beyond the peaceful and beautiful cemetery, whose unpretentious chapel could have been taken for some plain barn or other, if the Greek cross had not gleamed from its grayed bark roof. There, it seemed to him, he had a little family of his own.

But when he stepped outside, on his way down to the beach to wash himself, and beheld the peculiar stillness of the farmhouse, which had been decorated with spruce greens, and noticed that everything was lost in its own special serenity, as if there were no people here who would go to the well or the pigsty, no children to poke in the sand and run through the grass with their bare feet---then he remembered that it was Sunday and that little Sanni was to be buried on this day. For a moment the image of her face hovered before him, as he had seen it in its perfect beauty that moment when she died, and then he realized that it was this face, carved by him in some noble wood, which he held in his hand last night and which he would give to Sabine as   [p. 115]   the most beautiful thing he knew of. He felt a mighty joy stirring within him. He went excitedly back into the sauna and closed the door behind him, so that the twilight was broken only by a faint glimmer from the greenish murk of the windowpane, which was no bigger than a spread-out hand; then he crept into the darkest corner behind the stove in order to concentrate upon that idea which came welling up from within him, hammering at his chest and the delicate muscles of his heart, as if it wished, piercing through him, to find the way to his hands.

Meanwhile Sabine awoke in Uncle Ungert's little cottage, hale and hearty, and immediately looked around for her friend. He was not there. The old uncle stood over by the stove, busying himself with something or other. The cat sat beside him and stared straight out into space with its round yellow eyes.

"Uncle," said Sabine.

She did not receive an answer. The cat took a leisurely stretch and padded across the floor to the door. Sabine jumped nimbly up and opened the door for the cat; sticking her nose out, she decided that the weather was delightful. "He'll be here soon," she thought, "and then we'll go out." She went resolutely up to the stove, where she intended to look after her small bits of clothing, which were spread out here, there, and everywhere in the pleasant warmth.

"Back to bed!" Uncle Ungert said brusquely. "I have some warm water here. You'll get it. And an egg into the bargain."

"I want to go outside," said Sabine.

"As far as what you want is concerned, I have your will in my trousers pocket," said Uncle Ungert.

"May I see how it looks, then?" said Sabine, and very gently lifted up the tail of his old frock coat. She could not restrain a little effervescent laugh.

"People are not allowed to laugh today," said Uncle   [p. 116]   Ungert with great gentleness in his voice. "There's going to be a burial."

"Has it already started?" Sabine asked eagerly, as if they were discussing some special kind of spectacle.

"We'll be able to hear it from here when it begins," said Uncle Ungert. "We'll open the window and then we'll get to hear everything."

Sabine did not have to be told about it twice. She flew straight across the floor like the wind, the voluminous nightshirt fluttering around her legs. She opened the window as wide as she could and seated herself on the sill in order to enjoy the beautiful weather to the full. A big brown ant on the path below the window caught her attention. It looked so terribly comical. It crept with the uttermost care along a straw, and when it reached the end and could go no farther, it stopped, not knowing what to do, and one could see how unhappy it was. After thinking the matter over for a while---and unable to get hold of anything, no matter how much it waved its antennae in the air---it turned around and climbed back carefully along the way it had come. Sabine could not help laughing. Her eyes shone, and the corners of her mouth were full of unspoken wishes.

Then she heard the bell ringing, and grew quite serious and still. Ding, dong, sang the bell with heavy strokes. It sounded very beautiful and solemn in this morning hour. And suddenly the little bells joined in with an endless and jubilant ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling, which never stopped but simply kept on climbing and climbing in an infinite rhythm like one of the fugues of Father Bach. Sabine listened enchanted. "Now the soul is passing up to heaven," she thought, and it gladdened her that she had had the chance to hear it, for now she knew that the soul no longer mourned or lamented.

  [p. 117]  

Amidst the sound of the bells, the little coffin was borne out of the chapel which stood on the birch-covered point; and, their heads bowed, the people walked beneath the bright trees. They walked among the forgotten graves with their grayed and crooked crosses which stuck up out of the earth like strange, odorless flowers from the fields of some other existence. Standing to one side, Myyriäinen, his blue eyes faintly veiled, gazed upon the gentle summer landscape: the wooded holms, the inlets covered with water lilies, the blooming meadows at the edge of the forest. In mysterious and joyful rhythms the words of the Byzantine ritual, heavy as death, rose up toward the sky, like an echo of the age-old lament of the human soul, wandering blighted in the wilderness:

What a mournful parting, oh brothers! What a lament! What weeping in this hour! Come, let us take farewell of her who but recently was among us, now she shall be lowered into the grave, the stone shall be rolled over her, she shall have her place in the darkness, she shall be buried among the dead, all her relatives and friends shall be parted from her now.

Wonder of wonders! What mystery is this which now has befallen us? How does it happen that we have been surrendered unto destruction? How have we been placed under a common yoke with death?

Woe, how the soul struggles, when it is parted from the flesh! Woe, how it weeps, and there is no one to take pity upon it. It sends its glance unto the angels, but it beseeches them in vain, it stretches out its hands toward humankind, but finds no one to help it.

For this reason, dear brothers, let us consider the shortness of our life and let us implore Christ to give peace to her who has departed, and to give great mercy to our souls.

The people stood in tight clusters, their faces pale, as if   [p. 118]   they expected that the words' wild lament and the blessed joy of the irresistibly ascending melodies would bear them upward to the throne of the mystery, letting them behold the Resurrection:

Accompany, oh Savior, your handmaiden's soul to rest among the spirits of the pious departed and hide her in blessed life with You, Who love the children of men!

Little Sanni's face spread out like a fair and spacious countryside before Myyriäinen's gaze. He saw that trees grew upon its hills and the inlets with the water lilies were reflected in its peace and the fields and the blooming meadowlands had found their fitting place within its mighty contours. All that he loved in his heart's country was found within this face. It was little Sanni's face and yet it was not, but rather his face too and Lampinen's and that of the smallest child, and it was the face of the whole people. It was the face of man in the land of his heart. It would never die.

On this day Sabine waited in vain for her friend.

She had to console herself with Assendorff, who swore by all that was holy that he would bring Myran^[1*] back with him in the evening. Myran was the pet name she had thought up for Myyriäinen, and she had a great deal of fun imagining what he would say about it. Only many, many years later, when they both were old folks and sat nodding at one another, would she tell him how she had happened to call him that---he looked just like that big clumsy ant which crept out so carefully along the straw, and which could only return the way it had come. Besides, as the afternoon went on, Uncle Ungert began to tell stories, and then Sabine was lost to the world. Never in her life had she heard their like. She even forgot to miss her friend. If she had known that   [p. 119]   she was the last person to get to hear these tales, which had become a historical tradition in our village, from Uncle Ungert's own lips, then she would have been still prouder than she already was at the confidence which was shown her.

When Assendorff came to fetch Myyriäinen in the evening, the woodcarver stood outside of the sauna lost in contemplation of something which Assendorff---with the best will in the world---could only regard as a roughhewn block of wood, a block supposed to represent heaven knows what, perhaps the devil himself or his grandmother. Assendorff could not have been more astonished at the peculiar man's behavior: he walked around the block of wood in the oddest way, looking at it with a dreadfully strange gaze, first from one side and then from the other, and it was nothing much to look at in the first place. "This man is crazy," Assendorff thought. Myyriäinen did not answer when he was spoken to, either, but just stood there staring at the block with his hair on end. It was really uncanny. He looked so upset and his gaze was so queer that Assendorff contemplated the axe which lay on the ground nearby with a certain shyness. After all, he could not know that the man he had before him was in such a state of humbleness and pious astonishment that he could not have hurt a fly; liberated from that demon of loneliness which is the source of evil and of suffering, he was in harmony with the cosmos and felt a common bond with all things which have received a spark from the Creator's hand.

"Look here," said Myyriäinen when he caught sight of Assendorff. "I'm going to make something beautiful for Sabine."