I feel that I am near death myself, as near perhaps as he is, whom I sent to his doom. Farewell, my own beloved bride. . . . What will she do? she is so strangely calm--the calm of wordless despair. Her brother has not yet come, and to-morrow--on the Ravenshill--!
Here the diary of Erik Sorensen stopped suddenly. What followed can be learned from the written and witnessed statements of the pastor of Aalso, the neighboring parish to Veilbye.
II
It was during the seventeenth year of my term of office that the terrible event happened in the neighborhood which filled all who heard of it with shock and horror, and brought shame and disgrace upon our holy calling. The venerable Soren Quist, Rector of Veilbye, killed his servant in a fit of rage and buried the body in his garden.
He was found guilty at the official trial, through the testimony of many witnesses, as well as through his own confession. He was condemned to death, and the sentence was carried out in the presence of several thousand people on the little hill known as Ravenshill, here in the field of Aalso.
The condemned man had asked that I might visit him in his prison.
I must state that I have never given the holy sacrament to a better prepared or more truly repentant Christian. He was calm to the last, full of remorse for his great sin. On the field of death he spoke to the people in words of great wisdom and power, preaching to the text from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, chap. ii., verse 6:
"He hath despised the priest in the indignation of his anger." He spoke of his violence and of its terrible results, and of his deep remorse. He exhorted his hearers to let his sin and his fate be an example to them, and a warning not to give way to anger. Then he commended his soul to the Lord, removed his upper garments, bound up his eyes with his own hand, then folded his hands in prayer.
When I had spoken the words, "Brother, be of good cheer. This day shalt thou be with thy Saviour in Paradise," his head fell by the ax.
The one thing that made death bitter for him was the thought of his children. The son had been sent for from Copenhagen, but as we afterwards learned, he had been absent from the city, and therefore did not arrive until shortly after his father had paid the penalty for his crime.
I took the daughter into my home, where she was brought, half fainting, after they had led her father from the prison. She had been tending him lovingly all the days of his trial. What made even greater sorrow for the poor girl, and for the district judge who spoke the sentence, was that these two young people had solemnly plighted their troth but a few short weeks before, in the rectory of Veilbye. The son arrived just as the body of the executed criminal was brought into my house. It had been permitted to us to bury the body with Christian rites, if we could do it in secret. The young man threw himself over the lifeless body. Then, clasping his sister in his arms, the two wept together in silence for some while. At midnight we held a quiet service over the remains of the Rector of Veilbye, and the body was buried near the door of Aalso church. A simple stone, upon which I have carved a cross, still stands to remind the passer-by of the sin of a most unfortunate man.
The next morning his two children had disappeared. They have never been heard of since. God knows to what far-away corner of the world they have fled, to hide their shame and their sorrow. The district judge is very ill, and it is not believed that he will recover.
May God deal with us all after His wisdom and His mercy!
O Lord, inscrutable are thy ways!
In the thirty-eighth year of my service, and twenty-one years after my unfortunate brother in office, the Rector of Veilbye had been beheaded for the murder of his servant, it happened one day that a beggar came to my door. He was an elderly man, with gray hair, and walked with a crutch. He looked sad and needy. None of the servants were about, so I myself went into the kitchen and gave him a piece of bread. I asked him where he came from. He sighed and answered:
"From nowhere in particular."
Then I asked him his name. He sighed still deeper, looked about him as if in fear, and said, "They once called me Niels Bruus."I was startled, and said, "God have mercy on us! That is a bad name. That is the name of a man who was killed many years back."Whereat the man sighed still deeper and replied: "It would have been better for me had I died then. It has gone ill with me since I left the country."At this the hair rose on my head, and I trembled in every limb.
For it seemed to me that I could recognize him, and also it seemed to me that I saw Morten Bruus before me in the flesh, and yet I had laid the earth over him three years before. I stepped back and made the sign of the cross, for verily I thought it was a ghost Isaw before me.
But the man sat down in the chimney corner and continued to speak.
