Page:The Garden of Romance - 1897.djvu/249

Rh a miracle had been worked for the good queen; and the wine and bread and everything in the basket lay there changed into roses.

So lived this princess in the thoughts of old Anthony; so she stood in living colour before his weary eyes, beside his bed in the poor wooden booth in the Danish land. He bared his head, looked up into her kind eyes, and all around was a glory of light, and roses spread themselves through the room and smelt so sweet. Then, too, came the peculiar delicious perfume of the apple-blossom, and he saw the blooming branches of an apple-tree waving over him—it was the tree that he and Molly had planted from the little kernel.

The tree scattered its perfumed petals over his hot forehead and cooled it; they fell on his parched lips, and it was like refreshing bread and wine; they fell on his breast, and then he felt peaceful and ready to slumber.

"I will go to sleep," he murmured; "sleep will do me good, and in the morning I shall get up again quite strong. How lovely! how beautiful! The apple-tree, planted in love, I see again in heavenly beauty!"

And so he slept.

The next day, the third day that his booth had been shut, the snow ceased falling, and the neighbour opposite went over to visit old Anthony, as he had not yet shown himself. There he lay stretched dead on his pallet, with his old nightcap clasped tightly in his two hands. But he did not have this one on in his coffin—he had a new one, clean and white.

Where were now the tears that he had shed? Where were the pearls? They remained in the nightcap—for