The morning sun without was gilding the steep shores on the further side of the great lake, and all the groves of yellowing leaf-trees shone like gold-dust amid the dark-blue pinewoods. The lake ran in waves with small dancing white caps of foam to their heads. The wind blew cold and fresh and the many-hued leaves drifted down upon the rimy hillsides.
A band of riders came forth from between the bishop’s palace and the house of the Brothers of Holy Cross. Lavrans stepped aside and bowed with a hand upon his breast, while he all but swept the sward with his hat, so Kristin could guess the nobleman in the fur cloak must be the bishop himself, and she curtsied to the ground.
The bishop reined in his horse and gave back the greeting; he beckoned Lavrans to him and spoke with him a while. In a short space Lavrans came back to the priest and child and said:
“Now am I bidden to eat at the bishop’s palace—think you Canon Martein, that one of the serving-men of the canonry could go with this little maid of mine home to Fartein the shoemaker’s and bid my men send Halvdan to meet me here with Guldsveinen at the hour of nones.”
The priest answered, doubtless what he asked could be done. But on this the barefooted monk who had spoken to Kristin on the tower stairs came forward and saluted them:
“There is a man here in our guesthouse who has an errand of his own to the shoemaker’s; he can bear your bidding thither, Lavrans Björgulfsön, and your daughter can go with him or bide at the cloister with me till you yourself are for home. I shall see to it that she has her food there.”
Lavrans thanked him but said, “ ’Twere shame you should be troubled with the child, brother Edvin—”
“Brother Edvin draws to himself all the children he can lay hands upon,” said Canon Martein and laughed. “ ’Tis in this wise he gets someone to preach to—”
“Aye, before you learned lords here in Hamar I dare not proffer my poor discourses,” said the monk without anger, and smiling. “All I am fit for is to talk to children and peasants, but even so, ’tis not well, we know, to muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn.”
Kristin looked up at her father beseechingly; she thought there was nothing she would like more than to go with Brother Edvin. So Lavrans gave thanks again, and while her father and the priest went after the bishop’s train, Kristin laid her hand in the monk’s, and they went down towards the cloister, a cluster of wooden houses and a light-hued stone church far down by the lakeside.
Brother Edvin gave her hand a little squeeze, and as they looked at one another they had both to laugh. The monk was thin and tall, but very stoop-backed; the child thought him like an old crane in the head, for ’twas little, with a small, shining, bald pate above a shaggy, white rim of hair, and set upon a long, thin, wrinkled neck. His nose was large too, and pointed like a beak. But ’twas something which made her light of heart and glad, only to look up into the long, narrow, deep-lined face. The old, sea-blue eyes were red-rimmed and the lids brown and thin as flakes. A thousand wrinkles spread out from them; the wizened cheeks with the reddish network of veins were scored with furrows which ran down towards the thin-lipped mouth, but ’twas as though Brother Edvin had grown thus wrinkled only through smiling at mankind.—Kristin thought she had never seen anyone so blithe and gentle; it seemed he bore some bright and privy gladness within which she would get to know of when he began to speak.
They followed the fence of an apple-orchard where there still hung upon the trees a few red and golden fruit. Two Preaching Brothers in black and white gowns were raking together withered beanshaws in the garden.
The cloister was not much unlike any other farm steading, and the guesthouse whither the monk led Kristin was most like a poor peasant’s house, though there were many bedsteads in it. In one of the beds lay an old man, and by the hearth sat a woman swathing a little child; two bigger children, boy and girl, stood beside her.
They murmured, both the man and the woman, that they had not been given their breakfast yet: “None will be at the pains to bear in food to us twice in the day, so we must e’en starve while you run about the town, Brother Edvin!”
“Nay, be not peevish, Steinulv,” said the monk, “—Come hither and make your greetings, Kristin—see this bonny, sweet little maid who is to stay and eat with us today.”
He told how Steinulv had fallen sick on the way home from a fair, and had got leave to lie here in the cloister guesthouse, for he had a kinswoman dwelling in the spital and she was so curst he could not endure to be there with her.
“But I see well enough, they will soon be weary of having me here,” said the peasant. “When you set forth again, Brother Edvin, there will be none here that has time to tend me, and they will surely have me to the spital again.”
“Oh! you will be well and strong long before I am done with my work in the church,” said Brother Edvin. “Then your son will come and fetch you—” He took up a kettle of hot water from the hearth and let Kristin hold it while he tended Steinulv. Thereupon the old man grew
