“Now say that the town is mine.”
“No.”
He began to jump on Herman. This hurt Herman, because he was lying athwart the ridge of the roof.
“Say that it is mine!”
“No.”
Peter jumped on him more than ever.
“Is it mine, what?”
Herman did not cry out. But he hit out wildly, and at last, maddened by pain, he bit Peter’s hand. Peter at once uttered a wild scream. Then Herman let go. But Peter was wise and screamed after the pain was gone.
“Take care, you who bite,” piped Hedvig in her thin voice.
Herman suddenly became horrified at his wicked deed. “Dear Peter, please forgive me,” he begged.
“Was it I who took the town then?” hissed Peter.
“Yes, I suppose it was.”
Peter felt better at once, but it suddenly struck him that his victory was not worth much and so he began to moan and cry again: “Oh, Oh, Oh.”
Herman was again alarmed and stricken with remorse: “Dear Peter, don’t cry, please forgive me, Peter, dear.”
“Will you give me your glass marble then?” whimpered Peter pitifully.
Herman pulled the glass marble out of his bag with a sigh and gave it to Peter. So at last Peter had gained something real from his robber’s career. He stood smiling to himself and weighed the five heavy marbles in his right hand but did not trouble to wipe off the blood from his left hand. It might always be useful to leave it there.
During this scene little Tord had also clambered out on to the roof. But he took no notice of the cries and noise of the others. He sat apart and leant over an old green box where nasturtiums had once grown, but which was now half-filled with rain water. Something moved in the depths. Strange little creatures with only heads and tails teemed in it. And they rose to the surface with little jerks and then disappeared again in the black, brown depths. Oh! how wonderfully mysterious it all was! He drew himself up silently. He cast anxious side-glances at the fight which was going on. Soon they would probably come and kick over the whole of his wonderful find. He hated his big brothers and sisters, who never let him enjoy anything in peace.
A voice was heard from the stairs and he crept behind the chimney.
It was Kristin. She emerged from the trap door like an old witch ready for a ride on her broom. She shook her fist, which was covered with gouty lumps, but nevertheless still had an iron grip.
“Were there ever such heathen children. You will break your necks and be good for nothing—that’s what will happen to you. Come down at once from the roof.”
The children slouched back to the trap door. Each one of them felt Kristin’s fingers in his hair. Peter approached cautiously and hunched up, holding his wounded hand like a shield in front of him. Kristin caught sight of it.
“What have you been doing, you naughty boy?”
Peter did not tell any tales himself but he looked beseechingly at Hedvig. He knew that she could not resist.
“It was Herman,” she panted. “He bit Peter until the blood ran. I only went out on the roof to see who was crying.”
In this way both Peter and Hedvig escaped a hair pulling and that was exactly what they had hoped for.
But Herman got a double dose and went home with bitterness in his heart.
Not until the other children were in their beds was Tord missed. It was not at all unusual for him to be lost like that. They looked for him in the usual places: the empty dog kennel, the wood shed, the hollow oak by the stable. But without success. At last Hedvig remembered that he had been with them on the roof and there they found him huddled up on the cold tiles, leaning against the box with the wonderful mosquito larvae, and wet with dew. He was sleeping with his dirty little thumb in his mouth.
Soon everything was silent in the big house. And one of the frosty “iron” nights of June fell with its devastation upon the neglected garden and fields of Selambshof.
III
The Dance of the Crow Indians
It was a fine warm summer afternoon, when the mosquito swarms hovered like high pillars of smoke in the avenue of Selambshof.
But in the garden on the north side of the house Oskar Selamb was sitting in his usual seat. He was sitting just where the mosses of the walls hung most heavily over the grey stone base and where the damp shade beneath the old elm tree seemed full of evil memories. His big straw hat was pushed far back on his head and his purple trembling hands were clasped round the handle of his walking stick. His beard grew like a weed round his weak half open mouth, and he stared in front of him with a lifeless, taciturn gloom that had little human left in it.
A friend of former days would scarcely have recognized him.
How had Oskar Selamb, owner of Selambshof, father of five young children, and not much past fifty, come to such a pass? The immediate cause was probably the death of his wife, but in order really to understand this tragedy one must go back to the tyranny of old Enoch. It was he who had broken his son’s spirit. Up to his thirtieth year Oskar had been little more than a sort of superior farm labourer on the estate, without any rights, without a will of his own, reviled and ill-treated by Old Hök, who kept his claws and his beak sharp till the end. It leaves a mark on a man to have his hopes in life picked piece by piece out of his breast by a father who feeds his own strong flame of
