There on the bed, with a heap of clothes thrown over him, lay Anders,
emaciated, with smooth, high forehead, and with his hollow eyes fixed
on his brother. Baard's knees trembled; he sat down at the foot of the
bed and burst into a violent fit of weeping. The sick man looked at
him intently and said nothing. At length he asked his wife to go out,
but Baard made a sign to her to remain; and now these two brothers
began to talk together. They accounted for everything from the day
they had bid for the watch up to the present moment. Baard concluded
by producing the lump of gold he always carried about him, and it now
became manifest to the brothers that in all these years neither had
known a happy day.
Anders did not say much, for he was not able to do so, but Baard
watched by his bed as long as he was ill.
"Now I am perfectly well," said Anders one morning on waking. "Now, my
brother, we will live long together, and never leave each other, just
as in the old days."
But that day he died.
Baard took charge of the wife and the child, and they fared well from
that time. What the brothers had talked of together by the bed, burst
through the walls and the night, and was soon known to all the people
in the parish, and Baard became the most respected man among them. He
was honored as one who had known great sorrow and found happiness
again, or as one who had been absent for a very long time.
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