When they cut Grandfather down they found a scrap of paper in his jacket pocket. He was wearing a white shirt and his best suit with watch chain and waistcoat, his thick hair was brushed back like shining fur, and there was no gray in it, because he had eaten bones and gristle all his life. His beard was gone, and the men who found him said he looked naked and ten years younger, and I have wondered whether they really saw him right away in there. For it was dark and early morning and they might have brushed against his legs so he swung to and fro with a creaking sound from the beam in the quiet barn with the row of cows’ rumps. And was Dorit standing up in her stall, or lying in the straw chewing the cud, and did she know the man who owned her was hanging there on a rope from the ceiling with a scrap of paper in his pocket?The paper was folded twice without a speck on it and bore a note in his handwriting: I cannot go on any longer. I was sure that was something we understood, both Jesper and I, that he could not go on any longer, but what it was he could not go on with we had no idea, because he was as strong as an ox and could work harder and longer than anyone else I have ever known.Once a month he harnessed Lucifer to the trap and set off at a trot into town, and then no one else was allowed to go with him.
