Ulrika started back in wonder and dismay. "You don't believe it!" she said in awed accents. "Are you also a heathen?"
"I don't know what you mean by a heathen," replied Britta almost gaily. "But I can't believe that God, who is so good, is going to everlastingly burn anybody. He couldn't, you know! It would hurt Him so much to see poor creatures writhing about in flames for ever—we would not be able to bear it, and I'm quite sure it would make Him miserable even in heaven. Because He is all Love—He says so,—He couldn't be cruel!"
This frank statement of Britta's views presented such a new form of doctrine to Ulrika's heavy mind that she was almost appalled by it. God couldn't burn anybody for ever—He was too good! What a daring idea! And yet so consoling—so wonderful in the infinite prospect of hope it offered, that she smiled,—even while she trembled to contemplate it. Poor soul! She talked of heathens—being herself the worst type of heathen—namely, a Christian heathen. This sounds incongruous—yet it may be taken for granted that those who profess to follow Christianity, and yet make of God, a being malicious, revengeful, and of more evil attributes than they possess themselves,—are as barbarous, as unenlightened, as hopelessly sunken in slavish ignorance as the lowest savage who adores his idols of mud and stone. Britta was quite unconscious of having said anything out of the common—she was addressing herself to Svensen.
"Where is the bonde buried, Valdemar?" she asked in a low tone.
He looked at her with a strange, mysterious smile.
"Buried? Do you suppose his body could mix itself with common earth? No!—he sailed away, Britta—away—yonder!"
And he pointed out through the window to the Fjord now, invisible in the deep darkness.
Britta stared at him with roundly opened, frightened eyes—her face paled.
"Sailed away? You must be dreaming! Sailed away! How could he—if he was dead?"
Valdemar grew suddenly excited. "I tell you, he sailed away!" he repeated in a low, hoarse whisper. "Where is his ship, the Valkyrie? Try if you can find it anywhere—on sea or land! It has gone, and he has gone with it—like a king and warrior—to glory, joy, and victory! Glory—joy—victory!—those were his last words!"