answer really might overspread the whole field of dark questionings, and the lofty image of Him who first made these words an everlasting proverb on the earth, stood forth all the more exclusively and dominantly in her soul.

The human mind resembles the Swedish Island (Gottland, the eye of the Baltic), which, according to an old legend, alternately elevated itself above the surface of the sea, and alternately sank below it, until its people carried fire upon the island, after which it remained stedfastly above. So alternately rises and sinks the uneasy island of the soul seeking for light, until a fire is kindled in it, a fire which is called-love of God.

In the mean time spring advanced. The birches reddened in the pasture-fields; their slender leaves put forth; the starlings built their nests, and filled the air with their plaintive whistling and trilling; the hawthorn bloomed in the meadows; the lilacs were full of buds; bees murmured, and all the fruit-trees in the garden were full of blossom. The abundant waters of the little river danced down the wooded steeps of the mountain district, where it had its birthplace, and down to the ever greener meadows amid which lay the parsonage of Solberga. When Yngve was first able to support himself upon his injured knee, he wandered, leaning on Hertha's arm, beneath the blossoming trees of the garden, and through copses of pine and birch, down to the banks of the river. How extraordinarily weak, and yet how elate he often felt himself! He was impatient at knowing himself an invalid; he was enchanted by the touching beauty of nature-a minor-key pervades the life of the spring in our north, even as it pervades the northern folk's song, he was conscious of a heartfelt gratitude to her upon whose faithful arm he was sup

ported so firmly and tenderly; he was made happy by the assistance she rendered him; and Hertha-need I tell my lady-readers that she was happy in rendering him this assistance?

The first time that he was able to go somewhat farther, she conducted him to the churchyard, which lay on higher ground, at some little distance from the parsonage, and to Alma's grave. She had planted it with white roses and mignonette, and had placed a seat opposite to it. Here, for the first time, Hertha spoke of her beloved sister, and for the first time Yngve felt what a depth of tenderness was concealed in her soul, and that the bitterness of her feelings had its root in the strength of her sympathy for the suffering of others. Yngve repaid her confidence by making her acquainted with his own family circumstances-his mother and her beautiful life. He described her as one of those souls so filled with the love of the Saviour that it became to her like a new nature and a perpetual inspiration, which caused her to speak and to act with a clearness and a straightforwardness which captivated or overcame, as by the power of some beautiful music. He told her of his happy childhood in this mother's home, with several brothers; how she taught him always to act according to his best convictions, and thus to be regardless of consequences. She used often

to quote the words of an old hymn:

Do right; do well in dying;

And leave the rest to God!

This had early given rise in him to a cheerful and joyous disposition, and a certain freedom from anxiety as regarded the future. He described, also, this mother's person and manners,-described how handsome, how gentle and lovable she was; how unceasingly and quietly she laboured for others; seeking to strengthen, to raise up, to comfort, and how the inward peace seemed to beam around her whole being, like the glory of a saint.

The two friends often returned to this place, and to this subject. Yngve sometimes read to Hertha the letters which he received from his mother, now closely occupied at the sick bed of her brother, Yngve's uncle. And the peculiar life and beauty which Yngve had so lovingly described, breathed forth from the letters. Hertha listened to these communications with the mingled feelings of pleasure and pain. Sometimes her eyes filled with sweet tears, as she contemplated this love, this sweet relationship between parent and child. Sometimes she felt a painful sting in her heart at the contemplation of a beauty, a peace from which she was so far apart; and the great admiration and love which Yngve expressed for the feminine type, as represented in his mother, at times gave rise to a sentiment akin to jealousy in her heart.

The proud mind also raised itself at times in opposition and self-defence.

"She has never experienced injustice and severe treatment," said Hertha, on one of these occasions; "she has always experienced love, and then it is an easy thing to be gentle and amiable!"

But she blushed at the tone and the spirit with which these words were uttered, and all the more so when Yngve's serious eye was riveted upon her, as if enquiring what it could be which had now wounded her. She endeavoured to avoid it by asking still more of his mother and his family circumstances.

The mother still lived as a widow, in the house of her elder brother, and Yngve was not satisfied with her position there, although she never complained; he knew that she was not happy. He looked forward with longing to the time when he should be able to have a home of his own, and take his mother to live with him. He talked with childish delight of how he would arrange everything for her; how her room should be furnished,

simply and elegantly at the same time, as he knew she liked things to be. Yngve was the eldest of his brothers, and the mother had given all that she possessed for the education of her sons, that it might be as complete as possible. She was compelled, therefore, herself to live on very circumscribed means. Yet she felt herself, and all her letters testified to this, rich in her sons and their future. Yngve also spoke of his brothers, whom he cordially loved. They were some years younger than himself, and were only just now able fully to provide for themselves, the one as tutor in a private family, the other as a naval officer.

"Good lads! excellent lads!" Yngve used to call them, "yet, nevertheless, they had their faults; " which evidently had often caused the brother uneasiness. He talked about them sometimes in a fatherly kind of tone, which made Hertha one day laughingly ask him, "how much older he was than his brothers?"

This led to the discovery that Yngve and Hertha were nearly of the same age; Hertha only a few months the elder of the two. Yet it seemed to Hertha that she was very old in comparison with Yngve. He was in fact so young in soul. Life and hope in him were in full blossom. Often, indeed, would the youthful flow of his spirits carry him along into playful extravagance. Then he would joke and laugh at 'everything, and draw caricatures of the ladies and gentlemen of their acquaintance, nay, even of himself and Hertha, which made her smile in spite of herself; and however it might be, even she herself became younger, as it were, during her intercourse with Yngve. Her heart grew brighter, so also did the expression of her countenance. Many remarked that she began to be really good-looking, and it was only Mrs. Uggla who suspected a galloping consumption from the heightened and clearer colour of Hertha's cheek.

THE NEW HOME.

HERTHA'S new home, Kullen, was about two miles from the parsonage. Between the two places lay the consumed portion of the town with its ruins and heaps of rubbish. But at Kullen, as well as at Solberga, the garden was full of blossoming trees. A garden in which lilacs and fruit-trees are in full bloom, and around which softly murmur thousands of insects, where every kind of shrub and plant puts forth fresh leaves day by day, has always seemed to us like a poem which must some way or other call forth the poetical in every soul. Yes, for every soul possesses, after all, a spark of the Promethean fire, however crushed down it may be by the rubbish of egotism or every-day life. Truly poetical natures require but a very small portion of this glory of the spring to be powerfully excited. E. G. Geijer enjoyed the whole wealth of nature and of spring in a blossoming cherry-tree outside his window.

Old Mr. Falk, during his town and business life, had almost forgotten how a garden looked. Removed now from his usual surroundings, and in a great measure debarred from his usual avocations, which the shattered condition of his health no longer permitted him to attend to, and also in consequence of this enfeebled state of health, rendered more susceptible than formerly to gentler influences, he found himself, as it were, astonished at the beauty which all at once surrounded him, and spoke to him of many subjects with which he had in his early youth been acquainted, but which had since then passed wholly out of sight.