Saying which, he pressed my hand, and asked me to go for my wife.

When she came, she was surprised to see him brighter and in better
spirits than she had ever thought he could be. He wanted, he said, to
ask a favour of her. It was a whim of his; but, if he should be called
away, she must promise him to plant a wild rose upon his grave next
spring.

My wife understood how sad the request was when I told her what had
already passed; for David had looked so confident and bright when he was
talking to her, that the sorrowful element was absent.

My friend's prophecy about himself proved to be only too true. Though
his mood grew constantly brighter, so that he sometimes even had a gleam
of the joy of living, his illness went in the opposite direction, always
toward the worst.

One day I found him lying and watching from his bed--where he now spent
nearly the whole day--my little Anton, who had "made a steamboat" out of
his old violin-case--of which the lid was gone--and was travelling with
it on the floor, touching at foreign ports. When I came up to the bed,
David told me, smiling, that he had been at home in Nordland playing on
the beach again.

My wife had, meantime, become more and more his sick-nurse. She was with
him two or three times a day, and sat at his bedside. He often held her
hand, or asked her to read him something out of his old Bible. The
portions he chose were generally those in which the Old Testament
speaks of love and lovers. He dwelt especially on the story of Jacob and
Rachel.