“God knows everything, both the present and the future. He Himself has ordained it all. And when you pray to God, Martin, you must not believe that you with your prayers can in the slightest alter His will. But still God wishes men to pray to Him, and therefore you must do it. You must never give up saying your evening prayer before you go to sleep, no matter how big and wise you get. But when you become big and have to look out for yourself in the world, you must never forget that you must depend first and foremost on yourself. God helps only him who helps himself. And if it ever happens in life that there is something you desire deeply, so that you think you can never be happy again unless you get it—then you must not pray to God to give it to you. Try rather to get it for yourself; but if that is impossible, then pray Him for strength to renounce your wish. He does not like other kinds of prayer.”
So Martin Birck’s mother spoke as they walked along. And the summer wind whispered around them and passed on over the field, and the grain waved.
The bridge-tender, old Moberg, had an assistant by the name of Johan. Johan was fourteen or fifteen and soon became Martin’s best friend. He made bows and arrows and bark boats for Martin, and Martin helped him to wind up the drawbridge. In the evening, when he was free, he used also to play hide and seek and “There’s no robbers in the woods” with Martin and Maria and a few other children. But it was neither on account of the bark boats nor the games that Martin was so fond of Johan and admired him so extraordinarily. It was because Johan always had so many wonderful things to tell about, things that papa and mamma and grandmother never told about. It was especially in the dusk that Johan was wont to be so communicative, when Martin and he sat on a beam by the opening in the bridge and waited for the approaching steamboat, whose lanterns would sooner or later pop out from behind the cape, first the green and then the red. At such times Johan might tell of this, that, or the other thing. One time it would be about old Moberg, who used to see tiny little devils jumping up and down, up and down, in his toddy glass; it was about them he talked when he sat muttering to himself and stirring his glass. But the minister at Lovö was still worse. Why, he was a friend of Old Spotty himself, the whole parish knew that. Anybody could see that for himself if he thought about it; how otherwise could he get up in the pulpit and preach the way he did for a whole hour; where did he get all his words from? Furthermore Johan had had to go to him one time on an errand and had been in his room and had seen with his own eyes that it was chock-full of books from floor to ceiling. Oh, yes, he was in with the Old Boy sure enough!—Or Johan would tell about a man who had been murdered on the highroad three years back, quite near, and would describe the place exactly: “It was just there where the wood is so thick on one side, and on the other is a willow alongside of a telegraph pole. It was an evening in November that it happened, and now if anybody goes by at the right time, he can hear the most terrible groaning in the ditch—But they never got the fellow that did it.”
When Martin heard such things, he squeezed close to Johan’s arm, and he felt lighter at heart when the steamboat’s lanterns shone out of the dark and came nearer, when he heard the thump-thump of the engine and the captain’s orders, and they had to hurry to wind up the drawbridge. When they went home across the bridge, they were both excited with thoughts of ghosts and murders, and Johan said to Martin, “Listen, he’s after us!”
Martin didn’t know whether he was the murderer or the murdered, but he fancied he heard steps on the bridge and didn’t dare to look around. Johan, however, who had a cheerful disposition, drove off his fear by striking up a jolly song. He sang to the tune of “There was an old woman by Konham Square”:
“I go to my death wherever I go, killivillivippombom!”
And Martin joined in and sang along with him.
But when they
