Old shoes are not beautiful in themselves, but the memories attached to these made them beautiful in his eyes, so he took them out of the cupboard, and laid them down by his side, and then placing his first Bible on his knee, he opened it at our Lord's Sermon on the Mount, and began to read. No one saw him, but that was not necessary, and his Regina knew it when it was all over. He grew very tired, and resting his head in the corner of the great chair fell asleep like a little child.
And so they found him when they came back. Mrs. Behrens seated herself on the arm of his chair, clasped him in her arms, closed his eyes, and then resting her head against his, wept silently. Louisa knelt at his feet, and laying her folded hands on his knee, looked with tearful eyes at the two quiet faces that were so dear to her. Then Mrs. Behrens rose, and folding down the leaf of the Bible, drew it softly out of her husband's hand, and Louisa also rose and threw her arms round her foster-mother's neck. They both wept long and passionately, till at last when it was growing dusk Mrs. Behrens replaced the shoes in the cupboard, saying as she did so: "I bless the day when we came to this house together," and while laying Louisa's little shoes beside them, she added: "and I bless the day when the child came to us." She then closed the cupboard-door.
The good old clergyman was buried three days later in the piece of ground he had long ago sought out for his last resting-place, and any one standing by the grave, which was lighted by the earliest rays of the morning-sun, might easily see into the parlour in the parsonage-house.
The people who had been at the funeral were all gone home, and Hawermann had also been obliged to go, but uncle Bräsig, who had spent the day at the parsonage helping his friends in every possible way, had announced his intention of remaining for the night. Seeing the two women standing arm in arm at the window buried in sad thought, he slipped quietly upstairs to his bed-room, and going to the window looked sorrowfully down into the church-yard, where the newly made grave showed distinctly against the white snow surrounding it. He thought of the good man who lay there, who had so often helped him with kindness and advice, and he swore to himself that he would be a faithful friend to Mrs. Behrens.--Down-stairs the two sad-hearted women were gazing at the same grave, and silently vowing to show each other all the love and tenderness that he who was gone from them had been wont to bestow. Little Mrs. Behrens thanked God and her husband for the comforter she had in her adopted daughter whom she held in her arms, and whose smooth hair she stroked, as she kissed her lovingly. Louisa prayed that God would bless the lessons she had learnt from her foster-father, and would give her strength to be a good and faithful daughter to the kind woman who had been as a mother to her. New-made graves may be likened to flower-beds in which the gardener puts his rarest and most beautiful plants; but alas, ill-weeds sometimes take root there also.