But like giants the spirits advanced, and
the hymn, "Let the dead have rest!" goes before them. He knows it:
for daily in all these years it has sounded through his soul, and
now it becomes his own requiem; for this was death and its
visions. The perspiration started out over his whole body, for
nearer and nearer,--and see there, on the window-pane there, there
they are now; and he heard his name. Overpowered with dread he
struggled to shout, for he was strangling; a dead, cold hand
already clenched his throat, when he regained his voice in a
shrieking "Help me!" and awoke. At that moment the window was
burst in with such force that the pieces flew on to his bed. He
sprang up; a man stood in the opening, around him smoke and
tongues of fire.
"The house is burning, Lars, we'll help you out!"
It was Canute Aakre.
When again he recovered consciousness, he was lying out in a
piercing wind that chilled his limbs. No one was by him; on the
left he saw his burning house; around him grazed, bellowed,
bleated, and neighed his stock; the sheep huddled together in a
terrified flock; the furniture recklessly scattered: but, on
looking around more carefully, he discovered somebody sitting on a
knoll near him, weeping. It was his wife. He called her name. She
started.
"The Lord Jesus be thanked that you live," she exclaimed, coming
forward and seating herself, or rather falling down before him: "O
God! O God! now we have enough of that railroad!"
"The railroad?" he asked: but ere he spoke, it had flashed through
his mind how it was; for, of course, the cause of the fire was the
falling of sparks from the locomotive among the shavings by the
new side-wall.
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