Then—steady and clear and resonant—a single sound echoed through the air, like a long note played on an exceedingly sweet silver trumpet. It began softly—swelled to a crescendo—then died delicately away. Güldmar raised his head—his face was full of rapt and expectant gravity,—his action, too, was somewhat singular, for he drew the knife from his girdle and kissed the hilt solemnly, returning it immediately to its sheath. At the same moment Lovisa uttered a loud cry, and flinging the coverings from her, strove to rise from her bed. Ulrika held her firmly,—she struggled feebly yet determinedly, gazing the while with straining, eager, glassy eyes into the gloom of the opposite corner.
"Darkness—darkness!" she muttered hoarsely,—"and the white faces of dead things! There—there they lie!—all still, at the foot of the black chasm—their mouths move without sound—what—what are they saying? I cannot hear—ask them to speak louder—louder! Ah!" and she uttered a terrified scream that made the rafters ring. "They move!—they stretch out their hands—cold, cold hands!—they are drawing me down to them—down—down—to that darkness! Hold me—hold me! don't let me go to them—Lord, Lord be merciful to me—let me live—live—" Suddenly she drew back in deadly horror, gesticulating with her tremulous lean hands as though it shut away the sight of some loathsome thing unveiled to her view. "Who is it"—she asked in an awful, shuddering whisper—"who is it that says there is no hell? I see it!" Still retreating backwards, backwards—the clammy dew of death darkening her affrighted countenance,—she turned her glazing eyes for the last time on Güldmar. Her lips twitched into a smile of dreadful mockery.
"May—thy gods—reward thee—Olaf Güldmar—even—as mine—are—rewarding—me!"
And with these words, her head dropped heavily on her breast. Ulrika laid her back on her pillow, a corpse. The stern, cruel smile froze slowly on her dead features—gradually she became, as it were, a sort of ancient cenotaph, carved to resemble old age combined with unrepenting evil—the straggling white hair that rested on her wrinkled forehead looking merely like snow fallen on sculptured stone.
"Good Lord, have mercy on her soul!" murmured Ulrika piously, as she closed the upward staring eyes, and crossed the withered hands.
"Good devil, claim thine own!" said Güldmar, with proudly lifted arm and quivering, disdainful lips. "Thou foolish woman! Thinkest thou thy Lord makes place for murderers in His heaven? If so, 'tis well I am not bound there! Only the just can tread the pathway to Valhalla,—'tis a better creed!"
Ulrika looked at his superb, erect figure and lofty head, and a strangely anxious expression flitted across her dull countenance.
"Nay, bonde, we do not believe that the Lord accepteth murderers, without they repent themselves of their backslidings,—but if with penitence they turn to Him even at the eleventh hour, haply they may be numbered among the elect."
Güldmar's eyes flashed. "I know not thy creed, woman, nor care to learn it! But, all the same, thou art deceived in thy vain imaginings. The Eternal Justice cannot err—call that justice Christ or Odin as thou wilt. I tell you, the soul of the innocent bird that perishes in the drifting snow is near and dear to its Creator—but the tainted soul that had yonder vile body for its tenement, was but a flame of the evil one, and accursed from the beginning,—it must return to him from whom it came. A heaven for such as she? Nay—rather the lowest circle of the furthest and fiercest everlasting fires—and thither do I commend her! Farewell!"
Rapidly muffling himself up in his wraps, he strode out of the house. He sprang into his sledge, throwing a generous gratuity to the small Laplander who had taken charge of it, and who now ventured to inquire—