My wife, who had now become very fond of him, confided to me one day
that she was sure she knew what my friend was suffering from; it was
certainly nothing but unrequited love.

She had never thought any one could look so touchingly beautiful as he
did, when death was near. When he lay still and smiled, it was as though
he were thinking of a tryst he should go to, as soon as he had done with
us here on earth.

One evening he asked my wife to sit with him. At nine o'clock a message
came for me; but when I got there, he was gone.

He had asked my wife to read to him, for the first time, a part of
Solomon's Song, where she found an old mark in his Bible. It was the
second chapter, in which both the bride and the bridegroom speak, and
which begins: "I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valley"; and
ends: "Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved,
and be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether."

He had asked her to read it a second time, but during the reading he had
quietly fallen asleep.

And there he lay, beautiful in death, with a peaceful smile, as though
he were greeting just such a grove, on the other side of the mountains
of Bether.

Next summer there stood a wooden cross, and a blooming, wild briar-rose,
on a grave in one of the churchyards of the town. There rests my friend
David Holst.