"We end where we began," he would say. "A smith was I from my
childhood and a smith I shall die. What a fate for one of the blood of
Thorgrimmer! Yet I am selling you into the same bondage, or so it would
seem. But who knows? Who knows? We design, but God decrees."
It is to be noted that when old men cease from the occupation of their
lives, often enough within a very little time they also cease from life
itself. So it was with my uncle. Day by day he faded till at last at
the beginning of the third winter after I came to him he took to his bed
where he lay growing ever weaker till at length he died in the hour of
the birth of the new year.
To the last his mind remained clear and strong, and never more so than
on the night of his death. That evening after I had eaten I went to his
room as usual and found him reading a beautiful manuscript of the book
of the Wisdom of Solomon that is called Ecclesiastes, a work which he
preferred to all others, since its thoughts were his. "I gathered me
also silver and gold and the peculiar treasures of kings," he read
aloud, whether to himself or to me I knew not, and went on, "So I was
great, and increased more than all that were before me.
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