They accounted for everything from the day they had bid for the watch up to the present moment.

Baard concluded by producing the lump of gold he always carried about him, and it now became manifest to the brothers that in all these years neither had known a happy day.
Anders did not say much, for he was not able to do so, but Baard watched by his bed as long as he was ill.
"Now I am perfectly well," said Anders one morning on waking.

"Now, my brother, we will live long together, and never leave each other, just as in the old days." But that day he died.
Baard took charge of the wife and the child, and they fared well from that time.

What the brothers had talked of together by the bed, burst through the walls and the night, and was soon known to all the people in the parish, and Baard became the most respected man among them.

He was honored as one who had known great sorrow and found happiness again, or as one who had been absent for a very long time.