“Lars Gunnarson!” exclaimed the pastor in astonishment. “What has come over you?”
Lars immediately pulled himself together.
“Can’t I be rid of this lunatic?” he said, as though Jan were the one he had sworn at. “Here stand the pastor and all my neighbours regarding me as a murderer only because a madman happens to hold a grudge against me! I tell you he wants to get back at me on account of his daughter. How could I know that she would leave home and go wrong simply because I wanted what was due me. Is there no one here who will take charge of Jan,” he asked, “so that the rest of us may enjoy the service in peace?”
The pastor sat stroking his forehead. Lars’s remarks troubled him; but he could not reprimand him when he had no positive proof that the man had committed a wrong. He looked around for the old mistress of Falla; but she had slipped away. Then he glanced out over the gathering, and from that quarter he got no help. He was confident that all in the room knew whether or not Lars was guilty, yet, when he turned to them, their faces looked quite blank. Meantime Katrina had come forward and taken Jan by the arm, and the two of them were then moving toward the door. Anyhow, the pastor had no desire to question a crazy man.
“I think this will do for tonight,” he said quietly. “We will bring the meeting to a close.” He made a short prayer, which was followed by a hymn. Whereupon the people went their ways.
The pastor was the last to leave. While Lars was seeing him to the gate he spoke quite voluntarily of that which had just taken place.
“Did you mark, Pastor, it was the Sunday after Midsummer Day I was to be on my guard?” he said. “That just shows it was the girl Jan had in mind. It was the Sunday after Midsummer of last year that I was over at Jan’s place to have an understanding with him about the hut.”
All these explanations only distressed the pastor the more. Of a sudden he put his hand on Lars’s shoulder and tried to read his face.
“I’m not your judge, Lars Gunnarson,” he said in warm, reassuring tones, “but if you have something on your conscience, you can come to me. I shall look for you every day. Only don’t put it off too long!”
An Old Troll
The second winter of the little girl’s absence from home was an extremely severe one. By the middle of January it had grown so unbearably cold that snow had to be banked around all the little huts in the Ashdales as a protection against the elements, and every night the cows had to be covered with straw, to keep them from freezing to death.
It was so cold that the bread froze; the cheese froze, and even the butter turned to ice. The fire itself seemed unable to hold its warmth. It mattered not how many logs one laid in the fireplace, the heat spread no farther than to the edge of the hearth.
One day, when the winter was at its worst, Jan decided that instead of going out to his work he would stay at home and help Katrina keep the fire alive. Neither he nor the wife ventured outside the hut that day, and the longer they remained indoors the more they felt the cold. At five o’clock in the afternoon, when it began to grow dark, Katrina said they might as well “turn in”; it was no good their sitting up any longer, torturing themselves.
During the afternoon Jan had gone over to the window, time and again, and peered out through a little corner of a pane that had remained clear, though the rest of the glass was thickly crusted with frost flowers. And now he went back there again.
“You can go to bed, Katrina dear,” he said as he stood looking out, “but I’ve got to stay up a while longer.”
“Well I never!” ejaculated Katrina. “Why should you stay up? Why can’t you go to bed as well as I?”
But Jan did not reply to her questions. “It’s strange I haven’t seen Agrippa Prästberg pass by yet,” he said.
“Is it him you’re waiting for!” snapped Katrina. “He hasn’t been so extra nice to you that you need feel called upon to sit up and freeze on his account!”
Jan put up his hand with a sweep of authority—this being the only mannerism acquired during his emperorship which had not been dropped. There was no fear of Prästberg coming to them, he told her. He had heard that the old man had been invited to a drinking bout at a fisherman’s but here in the Ashdales, but so far he had not seen him go by.
“I suppose he has had the good sense to stay at home,” said Katrina.
It grew colder and colder. The corners of the house creaked as if the freezing wind were knocking to be let in. All the bushes and trees were covered with such thick coats of snow and rim frost they looked quite shapeless. But bushes and trees, like humans, had to clothe themselves as well as they could, in order to be protected against the cold.
In a little while Katrina observed: “I see by the clock it’s only half after five, but all the same I’ll put on the porridge pot and prepare the evening meal. After supper, you can sit up and wait for Prästberg or go to bed, whichever you like.”
All this time Jan had stood at the window. “It can’t be that he has come this way without my seeing him?” he said.
“Who cares whether a brute like him comes or doesn’t come!” returned Katrina sharply, for she was tired of hearing about that old tramp.
Jan heaved a deep sigh. Katrina was more right than she herself knew. He did not care
