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Pelle the Conqueror — Volume 01

by Martin Andersen Nexø · English · Gutenberg #7791 · 602,755 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Pelle the Conqueror — Volume 01

Author: Martin Andersen Nexø

Translator: Jessie Muir


        
Release date: March 1, 2005 [eBook #7791]
                Most recently updated: July 7, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7791

Credits: Eric Eldred, Earle Beach and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PELLE THE CONQUEROR — VOLUME 01 ***




Pelle the Conqueror

BOYHOOD

by Martin Andersen Nexö

Translated from the Danish by Jessie Muir.




NOTE


When the first part of “Pelle Erobreren” (Pelle the Conqueror) appeared
in 1906, its author, Martin Andersen Nexö, was practically unknown even
in his native country, save to a few literary people who knew that he
had written some volumes of stories and a book full of sunshiny
reminiscences from Spain. And even now, after his great success with
“Pelle,” very little is known about the writer. He was born in 1869 in
one of the poorest quarters of Copenhagen, but spent his boyhood in his
beloved island Bornholm, in the Baltic, in or near the town, Nexö, from
which his final name is derived. There, too, he was a shoemaker’s
apprentice, like Pelle in the second part of the book, which resembles
many great novels in being largely autobiographical. Later, he gained
his livelihood as a bricklayer, until he somehow managed to get to one
of the most renowned of our “people’s high-schools,” where he studied
so effectually that he was enabled to become a teacher, first at a
provincial school, and later in Copenhagen.

“Pelle” consists of four parts, each, except perhaps the last, a
complete story in itself. First we have the open-air life of the boy in
country surroundings in Bornholm; then the lad’s apprenticeship in a
small provincial town not yet invaded by modern industrialism and still
innocent of socialism; next the youth’s struggles in Copenhagen against
employers and authorities; and last the man’s final victory in laying
the foundation of a garden-city for the benefit of his fellow-workers.
The background everywhere is the rapid growth of the labor movement;
but social problems are never obtruded, except, again, in the last
part, and the purely human interest is always kept well before the
reader’s eye through variety of situation and vividness of
characterization. The great charm of the book seems to me to lie in the
fact that the writer knows the poor from within; he has not studied
them as an outsider may, but has lived with them and felt with them, at
once a participant and a keen-eyed spectator. He is no sentimentalist,
and so rich is his imagination that he passes on rapidly from one scene
to the next, sketching often in a few pages what another novelist would
be content to work out into long chapters or whole volumes. His
sympathy is of the widest, and he makes us see tragedies behind the
little comedies, and comedies behind the little tragedies, of the
seemingly sordid lives of the working people whom he loves. “Pelle” has
conquered the hearts of the reading public of Denmark; there is that in
the book which should conquer also the hearts of a wider public than
that of the little country in which its author was born.

OTTO JESPERSEN,
Professor of English in the University of Copenhagen.


GENTOFTE, COPENHAGEN.
April, 1913.




Pelle the Conqueror




I. BOYHOOD




I


It was dawn on the first of May, 1877. From the sea the mist came
sweeping in, in a gray trail that lay heavily on the water. Here and
there there was a movement in it; it seemed about to lift, but closed
in again, leaving only a strip of shore with two old boats lying keel
uppermost upon it. The prow of a third boat and a bit of breakwater
showed dimly in the mist a few paces off. At definite intervals a
smooth, gray wave came gliding out of the mist up over the rustling
shingle, and then withdrew again; it was as if some great animal lay
hidden out there in the fog, and lapped at the land.

A couple of hungry crows were busy with a black, inflated object down
there, probably the carcass of a dog. Each time a wave glided in, they
rose and hovered a few feet up in the air with their legs extended
straight down toward their booty, as if held by some invisible
attachment. When the water retreated, they dropped down and buried
their heads in the carrion, but kept their wings spread, ready to rise
before the next advancing wave. This was repeated with the regularity
of clock-work.

A shout came vibrating in from the harbor, and a little while after the
heavy sound of oars working over the edge of a boat. The sound grew
more distant and at last ceased; but then a bell began to ring—it must
have been at the end of the mole—and out of the distance, into which
the beat of the oars had disappeared, came the answering sound of a
horn. They continued to answer one another for a couple of minutes.

The town was invisible, but now and then the silence there was broken
by the iron tramp of a quarryman upon the stone paving. For a long time
the regular beat of his footsteps could be heard, until it suddenly
ceased as he turned some corner or other. Then a door was opened,
followed by the sound of a loud morning yawn; and someone began to
sweep the pavement. Windows were opened here and there, out of which
floated various sounds to greet the gray day. A woman’s sharp voice was
heard scolding, then short, smart slaps and the crying of a child. A
shoemaker began beating leather, and as he worked fell to singing a
hymn—

“But One is worthy of our hymn, O brothers:
The Lamb on Whom the sins of all men lay.”


The tune was one of Mendelssohn’s “Songs without Words.”

Upon the bench under the church wall sat a boat’s crew with their gaze
turned seaward. They were leaning forward and smoking, with hands
clasped between their knees. All three wore ear-rings as a preventive
of colds and other evils, and all sat in exactly the same position, as
if the one were afraid of making himself in the very least different
from the others.

A traveller came sauntering down from the hotel, and approached the
fishermen. He had his coat-collar turned up, and shivered in the chill
morning air. “Is anything the matter?” he asked civilly, raising his
cap. His voice sounded gruff.

One of the fishermen moved his hand slightly in the direction of his
head-gear. He was the head man of the boat’s crew. The others gazed
straight before them without moving a muscle.

“I mean, as the bell’s ringing and the pilot-boat’s out blowing her
horn,” the traveller went on. “Are they expecting a ship?”

“May be. You never can tell!” answered the head man unapproachably.

The stranger looked as if he were deeply insulted, but restrained
himself. It was only their usual secretiveness, their inveterate
distrust of every one who did not speak their dialect and look exactly
like themselves. They sat there inwardly uneasy in spite of their
wooden exterior, stealing glances at him when he was not looking, and
wishing him at Jericho. He felt tempted to tease them a little.

“Dear me! Perhaps it’s a secret?” he said, laughing.

“Not that I know of,” answered the fisherman cautiously.

“Well, of course I don’t expect anything for nothing! And besides it
wears out your talking-apparatus to be continually opening and shutting
it. How much do you generally get?” He took out his purse; it was his
intention to insult them now.

The other fishermen threw stolen glances at their leader. If only he
did not run them aground!

The head man took his pipe out of his mouth and turned to his
companions: “No, as I was saying, there are some folks that have
nothing to do but go about and be clever.” He warned them with his
eyes, the expression of his face was wooden. His companions nodded.
They enjoyed the situation, as the commercial traveller could see from
their doltish looks.

He was enraged. Here he was, being treated as if he were air and made
fun of! “Confound you fellows! Haven’t you even learnt as much as to
give a civil answer to a civil question?” he said angrily.

The fishermen looked backward and forward at one another, taking mute
counsel.

“No, but I tell you what it is! She must come some time,” said the head
man at last.

“What ‘she’?”

“The steamer, of course. And she generally comes about this time. Now
you’ve got it!”

“Naturally—of course! But isn’t it a little unwise to speak so loud
about it?” jeered the traveller.

The fishermen had turned their backs on him, and were scraping out
their pipes.

“We’re not quite so free with our speech here as some people, and yet
we make our living,” said the head man to the others. They growled
their approval.

As the stranger wandered on down the harbor hill, the fishermen looked
after him with a feeling of relief. “What a talker!” said one. “He
wanted to show off a bit, but you gave him what he won’t forget in a
hurry.”

“Yes, I think it touched him on the raw, all right,” answered the man,
with pride. “It’s these fine gentlemen you need to be most careful of.”

Half-way down the harbor hill, an inn-keeper stood at his door yawning.
The morning stroller repeated his question to him, and received an
immediate answer, the man being a Copenhagener.

“Well, you see we’re expecting the steamer from Ystad today, with a big
cargo of slaves—cheap Swedish laborers, that’s to say, who live on
black bread and salt herrings, and do the work of three. They ought to
be flogged with red-hot icicles, that sort, and the brutes of farmers,
too! You won’t take a little early morning glass of something, I
suppose?”

“No, thank you, I think not—so early.”

“Very well, please yourself.”

Down at the harbor a number of farmers’ carts were already standing,
and fresh ones arrived at full gallop every minute. The newcomers
guided their teams as far to the front as possible, examined their
neighbors’ horses with a critical eye, and settled themselves into a
half-doze, with their fur collars turned up about their ears.
Custom-house men in uniform, and pilots, looking like monster penguins,
wandered restlessly about, peering out to sea and listening. Every
moment the bell at the end of the mole rang, and was answered by the
pilot-boat’s horn somewhere out in the fog over the sea, with a long,
dreary hoot, like the howl of some suffering animal.

“What was that noise?” asked a farmer who had just come, catching up
the reins in fear. His fear communicated itself to his horses, and they
stood trembling with heads raised listening in the direction of the
sea, with questioning terror in their eyes.

“It was only the sea-serpent,” answered a custom-house officer. “He
always suffers from wind in this foggy weather. He’s a wind-sucker, you
see.” And the custom-house men put their heads together and grinned.

Merry sailors dressed in blue with white handkerchiefs round their
necks went about patting the horses, or pricking their nostrils with a
straw to make them rear. When the farmers woke up and scolded, they
laughed with delight, and sang—

“A sailor he must go through
A deal more bad than good, good, good!”


A big pilot, in an Iceland vest and woollen gloves, was rushing
anxiously about with a megaphone in his hand, growling like an uneasy
bear. Now and then he climbed up on the molehead, put the megaphone to
his mouth, and roared out over the water: “Do—you—hear—any—thing?” The
roar went on for a long time out upon the long swells, up and down,
leaving behind it an oppressive silence, until it suddenly returned
from the town above, in the shape of a confused babble that made people
laugh.

“N-o-o!” was heard a little while after in a thin and long-drawn-out
cry from the sea; and again the horn was heard, a long, hoarse sound
that came rocking in on the waves, and burst gurgling in the splash
under the wharf and on the slips.

The farmers were out of it all. They dozed a little or sat flicking
their whips to pass the time. But every one else was in a state of
suspense. A number of people had gradually gathered about the harbor
—fishermen, sailors waiting to be hired, and master-artisans who were
too restless to stay in their workshop. They came down in their leather
aprons, and began at once to discuss the situation; they used nautical
expressions, most of them having been at sea in their youth. The coming
of the steamer was always an event that brought people to the harbor;
but to-day she had a great many people on board, and she was already an
hour behind time. The dangerous fog kept the suspense at high pressure;
but as the time passed, the excitement gave place to a feeling of dull
oppression. Fog is the seaman’s worst enemy, and there were many
unpleasant possibilities. On the best supposition the ship had gone
inshore too far north or south, and now lay somewhere out at sea
hooting and heaving the lead, without daring to move. One could imagine
the captain storming and the sailors hurrying here and there, lithe and
agile as cats. Stop!—Half-speed ahead! Stop!—Half-speed astern! The
first engineer would be at the engine himself, gray with nervous
excitement. Down in the engine-room, where they knew nothing at all,
they would strain their ears painfully for any sound, and all to no
purpose. But up on deck every man would be on the alert for his life;
the helmsman wet with the sweat of his anxiety to watch every movement
of the captain’s directing hand, and the look-out on the forecastle
peering and listening into the fog until he could hear his own heart
beat, while the suspense held every man on deck on tenterhooks, and the
fog-horn hooted its warning. But perhaps the ship had already gone to
the bottom!

Every one knew it all; every man had in some way or other been through
this overcharged suspense—as cabin-boy, stoker, captain, cook—and felt
something of it again now. Only the farmers were unaffected by it; they
dozed, woke up with a jerk, and yawned audibly.

The seafarers and the peasants always had a difficulty in keeping on
peaceable terms with one another; they were as different as land and
sea. But to-day the indifferent attitude of the peasants made the
sea-folk eye them with suppressed rage. The fat pilot had already had
several altercations with them for being in his way; and when one of
them laid himself open to criticism, he was down upon him in an
instant. It was an elderly farmer, who woke from his nap with a start,
as his head fell forward, and impatiently took out his watch and looked
at it.

“It’s getting rather late,” he said. “The captain can’t find his stall
to-day.”

“More likely he’s dropped into an inn on the way!” said the pilot, his
eyes gleaming with malice.

“Very likely,” answered the farmer, without for the moment realizing
the nature of the paths of the sea. His auditors laughed exultingly,
and passed the mistake on to their neighbors, and people crowded round
the unfortunate man, while some one cried: “How many inns are there
between this and Sweden?”

“Yes, it’s too easy to get hold of liquids out there, that’s the worst
of it,” the pilot went on. “But for that any booby could manage a ship.
He’s only got to keep well to the right of Mads Hansen’s farm, and he’s
got a straight road before him. And the deuce of a fine road!
Telegraph-wires and ditches and a row of poplars on each side—just
improved by the local board. You’ve just got to wipe the porridge off
your mustache, kiss the old woman, and climb up on to the bridge, and
there you are! Has the engine been oiled, Hans? Right away, then, off
we go; hand me my best whip!” He imitated the peasants’ manner of
speech. “Be careful about the inns, Dad!” he added in a shrill
falsetto. There were peals of laughter, that had an evil sound in the
prevailing depression.

The farmer sat quite still under the deluge, only lowering his head a
little. When the laughter had almost died away, he pointed at the pilot
with his whip, and remarked to the bystanders—

“That’s a wonderful clever kid for his age! Whose father art thou, my
boy?” he went on, turning to the pilot.

This raised a laugh, and the thick-necked pilot swelled with rage. He
seized hold of the body of the cart and shook it so that the farmer had
a difficulty in keeping his seat. “You miserable old clodhopper, you
pig-breeder, you dung-carter!” he roared. “What do you mean by coming
here and saying ‘thou’ to grown-up people and calling them ‘boy’? And
giving your opinions on navigation into the bargain! Eh! you lousy old
money-grubber! No, if you ever take off your greasy night-cap to
anybody but your parish clerk, then take it off to the captain who can
find his harbor in a fog like this. You can give him my kind regards
and say I said so.” And he let go of the cart so suddenly that it swung
over to the other side.

“I may as well take it off to you, as the other doesn’t seem able to
find us to-day,” said the farmer with a grin, and took off his fur cap,
disclosing a large bald head.

“Cover up that great bald pumpkin, or upon my word I’ll give it
something!” cried the pilot, blind with rage, and beginning to clamber
up into the cart.

At that moment, like the thin metallic voice of a telephone, there came
faintly from the sea the words: “We—hear—a—steam—whistle!”

The pilot ran off on to the breakwater, hitting out as he passed at the
farmer’s horse, and making it rear. Men cleared a space round the
mooring-posts, and dragged up the gangways with frantic speed. Carts
that had hay in them, as if they were come to fetch cattle, began to
move without having anywhere to drive to. Everything was in motion.
Labor-hirers with red noses and cunning eyes, came hurrying down from
the sailors’ tavern where they had been keeping themselves warm.

Then as if a huge hand had been laid upon the movement, everything
suddenly stood still again, in strained effort to hear. A far-off, tiny
echo of a steam whistle whined somewhere a long way off. Men stole
together into groups and stood motionless, listening and sending angry
glances at the restless carts. Was it real, or was it a creation of the
heart-felt wishes of so many?

Perhaps a warning to every one that at that moment the ship had gone to
the bottom? The sea always sends word of its evil doings; when the
bread-winner is taken his family hear a shutter creak, or three taps on
the windows that look on to the sea—there are so many ways.

But now it sounded again, and this time the sound come in little waves
over the water, the same vibrating, subdued whistle that long-tailed
ducks make when they rise; it seemed alive. The fog-horn answered it
out in the fairway, and the bell in at the mole-head; then the horn
once more, and the steam-whistle in the distance. So it went on, a
guiding line of sound being spun between the land and the indefinite
gray out there, backward and forward. Here on terra firma one could
distinctly feel how out there they were groping their way by the sound.
The hoarse whistle slowly increased in volume, sounding now a little to
the south, now to the north, but growing steadily louder. Then other
sounds made themselves heard, the heavy scraping of iron against iron,
the noise of the screw when it was reversed or went on again.

The pilot-boat glided slowly out of the fog, keeping to the middle of
the fairway, and moving slowly inward hooting incessantly. It towed by
the sound an invisible world behind it, in which hundreds of voices
murmured thickly amidst shouting and clanging, and tramping of feet—a
world that floated blindly in space close by. Then a shadow began to
form in the fog where no one had expected it, and the little steamer
made its appearance—looking enormous in the first moment of surprise—in
the middle of the harbor entrance.

At this the last remnants of suspense burst and scattered, and every
one had to do something or other to work off the oppression. They
seized the heads of the farmers’ horses and pushed them back, clapped
their hands, attempted jokes, or only laughed noisily while they
stamped on the stone paving.

“Good voyage?” asked a score of voices at once.

“All well!” answered the captain cheerfully.

And now he, too, has got rid of his incubus, and rolls forth words of
command; the propeller churns up the water behind, hawsers fly through
the air, and the steam winch starts with a ringing metallic clang,
while the vessel works herself broadside in to the wharf.

Between the forecastle and the bridge, in under the upper deck and the
after, there is a swarm of people, a curiously stupid swarm, like sheep
that get up on to one another’s backs and look foolish. “What a cargo
of cattle!” cries the fat pilot up to the captain, tramping delightedly
on the breakwater with his wooden-soled boots. There are sheepskin
caps, old military caps, disreputable old rusty hats, and the women’s
tidy black handkerchiefs. The faces are as different as old, wrinkled
pigskin and young, ripening fruit; but want, and expectancy, and a
certain animal greed are visible in all of them. The unfamiliarity of
the moment brings a touch of stupidity into them, as they press
forward, or climb up to get a view over their neighbors’ heads and
stare open-mouthed at the land where the wages are said to be so high,
and the brandy so uncommonly strong. They see the fat, fur-clad farmers
and the men come down to engage laborers.

They do not know what to do with themselves, and are always getting in
the way; and the sailors chase them with oaths from side to side of the
vessel, or throw hatches and packages without warning at their feet.
“Look out, you Swedish devil!” cries a sailor who has to open the iron
doors. The Swede backs in bewilderment, but his hand involuntarily
flies to his pocket and fingers nervously his big pocket-knife.

The gangway is down, and the two hundred and fifty passengers stream
down it—stone-masons, navvies, maid-servants, male and female
day-laborers, stablemen, herdsmen, here and there a solitary little
cowherd, and tailors in smart clothes, who keep far away from the rest.
There are young men straighter and better built than any that the
island produces, and poor old men more worn with toil and want than
they ever become here. There are also faces among them that bear an
expression of malice, others sparkling with energy, and others
disfigured with great scars.

Most of them are in working-clothes and only possess what they stand
in. Here and there is a man with some tool upon his shoulder—a shovel
or a crowbar. Those that have any luggage, get it turned inside out by
the custom-house officers: woven goods are so cheap in Sweden. Now and
then some girl with an inclination to plumpness has to put up with the
officers’ coarse witticisms. There, for instance, is Handsome Sara from
Cimrishamn, whom everybody knows. Every autumn she goes home, and comes
again every spring with a figure that at once makes her the butt of
their wit; but Sara, who generally has a quick temper and a ready
tongue, to-day drops her eyes in modest confusion: she has fourteen
yards of cloth wrapped round her under her dress.

The farmers are wide awake now. Those who dare, leave their horses and
go among the crowd; the others choose their laborers with their eyes,
and call them up. Each one takes his man’s measure—width of chest,
modest manner, wretchedness; but they are afraid of the scarred and
malicious faces, and leave them to the bailiffs on the large farms.
Offers are made and conditions fixed, and every minute one or two
Swedes climb up into the hay in the back of some cart, and are driven
off.

A little on one side stood an elderly, bent little man with a sack upon
his back, holding a boy of eight or nine by the hand; beside them lay a
green chest. They eagerly watched the proceedings, and each time a cart
drove off with some of their countrymen, the boy pulled impatiently at
the hand of the old man, who answered by a reassuring word. The old man
examined the farmers one by one with an anxious air, moving his lips as
he did so: he was thinking. His red, lashless eyes kept watering with
the prolonged staring, and he wiped them with the mouth of the coarse
dirty sack.

“Do you see that one there?” he suddenly asked the boy, pointing to a
fat little farmer with apple-cheeks. “I should think he’d be kind to
children. Shall we try him, laddie?”

The boy nodded gravely, and they made straight for the farmer. But when
he had heard that they were to go together, he would not take them; the
boy was far too little to earn his keep. And it was the same thing
every time.

It was Lasse Karlsson from Tommelilla in the Ystad district, and his
son Pelle.

It was not altogether strange to Lasse, for he had been on the island
once before, about ten years ago; but he had been younger then, in full
vigor it might be said, and had no little boy by the hand, from whom he
would not be separated for all the world; that was the difference. It
was the year that the cow had been drowned in the marl-pit, and Bengta
was preparing for her confinement. Things looked bad, but Lasse staked
his all on one cast, and used the couple of krones he got for the hide
of the cow to go to Bornholm. When he came back in the autumn, there
were three mouths to fill; but then he had a hundred krones to meet the
winter with.

At that time Lasse had been equal to the situation, and he would still
straighten his bowed shoulders whenever he thought of that exploit.
Afterward, whenever there were short commons, he would talk of selling
the whole affair and going to Bornholm for good. But Bengta’s health
failed after her late child-bearing, and nothing came of it, until she
died after eight years of suffering, this very spring. Then Lasse sold
their bit of furniture, and made nearly a hundred krones on it; it went
in paying the expenses of the long illness, and the house and land
belonged to the landlord. A green chest, that had been part of Bengta’s
wedding outfit, was the only thing he kept. In it he packed their
belongings and a few little things of Bengta’s, and sent it on in
advance to the port with a horse-dealer who was driving there. Some of
the rubbish for which no one would bid he stuffed into a sack, and with
it on his back and the boy’s hand clasped in his, he set out to walk to
Ystad, where the steamer for Rönne lay. The few coins he had would just
pay their passage.

He had been so sure of himself on the way, and had talked in loud tones
to Pelle about the country where the wages were so incomprehensibly
high, and where in some places you got meat or cheese to eat with your
bread, and always beer, so that the water-cart in the autumn did not
come round for the laborers, but only for the cattle. And—why, if you
liked you could drink gin like water, it was so cheap; but it was so
strong that it knocked you down at the third pull. They made it from
real grain, and not from diseased potatoes; and they drank it at every
meal. And laddie would never feel cold there, for they wore wool next
their skin, and not this poor linen that the wind blew right through;
and a laborer who kept himself could easily make his two krones a day.
That was something different from their master’s miserable eighty öres
and finding themselves in everything.

Pelle had heard the same thing often before—from his father, from Ole
and Anders, from Karna and a hundred others who had been there. In the
winter, when the air was thick with frost and snow and the needs of the
poor, there was nothing else talked about in the little villages at
home; and in the minds of those who had not been on the island
themselves, but had only heard the tales about it, the ideas produced
were as fantastic as the frost-tracery upon the window-panes. Pelle was
perfectly well aware that even the poorest boys there always wore their
best clothes, and ate bread-and-dripping with sugar on it as often as
they liked. There money lay like dirt by the roadside, and the
Bornholmers did not even take the trouble to stoop and pick it up; but
Pelle meant to pick it up, so that Father Lasse would have to empty the
odds and ends out of the sack and clear out the locked compartment in
the green chest to make room for it; and even that would be hardly
enough. If only they could begin! He shook his father’s hand
impatiently.

“Yes, yes,” said Lasse, almost in tears. “You mustn’t be impatient.” He
looked about him irresolutely. Here he was in the midst of all this
splendor, and could not even find a humble situation for himself and
the boy. He could not understand it. Had the whole world changed since
his time? He trembled to his very finger-tips when the last cart drove
off. For a few minutes he stood staring helplessly after it, and then
he and the boy together carried the green chest up to a wall, and
trudged hand in hand up toward the town.

Lasse’s lips moved as he walked; he was thinking. In an ordinary way he
thought best when he talked out loud to himself, but to-day all his
faculties were alert, and it was enough only to move his lips.

As he trudged along, his mental excuses became audible. “Confound it!”
he exclaimed, as he jerked the sack higher up his back. “It doesn’t do
to take the first thing that comes. Lasse’s responsible for two, and he
knows what he wants—so there! It isn’t the first time he’s been abroad!
And the best always comes last, you know, laddie.”

Pelle was not paying much attention. He was already consoled, and his
father’s words about the best being in store for them, were to him only
a feeble expression for a great truth, namely, that the whole world
would become theirs, with all that it contained in the way of wonders.
He was already engaged in taking possession of it, open-mouthed.

He looked as if he would like to swallow the harbor with all its ships
and boats, and the great stacks of timber, where it looked as if there
would be holes. This would be a fine place to play in, but there were
no boys! He wondered whether the boys were like those at home; he had
seen none yet. Perhaps they had quite a different way of fighting, but
he would manage all right if only they would come one at a time. There
was a big ship right up on land, and they were skinning it. So ships
have ribs, just like cows!

At the wooden shed in the middle of the harbor square, Lasse put down
the sack, and giving the boy a piece of bread and telling him to stay
and mind the sack, he went farther up and disappeared. Pelle was very
hungry, and holding the bread with both hands he munched at it
greedily.

When he had picked the last crumbs off his jacket, he set himself to
examine his surroundings. That black stuff in that big pot was tar. He
knew it quite well, but had never seen so much at once. My word! If you
fell into that while it was boiling, it would be worse even than the
brimstone pit in hell. And there lay some enormous fish-hooks, just
like those that were hanging on thick iron chains from the ships’
nostrils. He wondered whether there still lived giants who could fish
with such hooks. Strong John couldn’t manage them!

He satisfied himself with his own eyes that the stacks of boards were
really hollow, and that he could easily get down to the bottom of them,
if only he had not had the sack to drag about. His father had said he
was to mind the sack, and he never let it out of his hands for a
moment; as it was too heavy to carry, he had to drag it after him from
place to place.

He discovered a little ship, only just big enough for a man to lie down
in, and full of holes bored in the bottom and sides. He investigated
the ship-builders’ big grind-stone, which was nearly as tall as a man.
There were bent planks lying there, with nails in them as big as the
parish constable’s new tether-peg at home. And the thing that ship was
tethered to—wasn’t it a real cannon that they had planted?

Pelle saw everything, and examined every single object in the
appropriate manner, now only spitting appraisingly upon it, now kicking
it or scratching it with his penknife. If he came across some strange
wonder or other, that he could not get into his little brain in any
other way, he set himself astride on it.

This was a new world altogether, and Pelle was engaged in making it his
own. Not a shred of it would he leave. If he had had his playfellows
from Tommelilla here, he would have explained it all to them. My word,
how they would stare! But when he went home to Sweden again, he would
tell them about it, and then he hoped they would call him a liar.

He was sitting astride an enormous mast that lay along the timber- yard
upon some oak trestles. He kicked his feet together under the mast, as
he had heard of knights doing in olden days under their horses, and
imagined himself seizing hold of a ring and lifting himself, horse and
all. He sat on horseback in the midst of his newly discovered world,
glowing with the pride of conquest, struck the horse’s loins with the
flat of his hand, and dug his heels into its sides, while he shouted a
song at the top of his voice. He had been obliged to let go the sack to
get up.

“Far away in Smaaland the little imps were dancing
    With ready-loaded pistol and rifle-barrelled gun;
All the little devils they played upon the fiddle,
    But for the grand piano Old Harry was the one.”


In the middle of his noisy joy, he looked up, and immediately burst
into a roar of terror and dropped down on to the wood-shavings. On the
top of the shed at the place where his father had left him stood a
black man and two black, open-mouthed hell-hounds; the man leaned half
out over the ridge of the roof in a menacing attitude. It was an old
figure-head, but Pelle thought it was Old Harry himself, come to punish
him for his bold song, and he set off at a run up the hill. A little
way up he remembered the sack and stopped. He didn’t care about the
sack; and he wouldn’t get a thrashing if he did leave it behind, for
Father Lasse never beat him. And that horrid devil would eat him up at
the very least, if he ventured down there again; he could distinctly
see how red the nostrils shone, both the devil’s and the dogs’.

But Pelle still hesitated. His father was so careful of that sack, that
he would be sure to be sorry if he lost it—he might even cry as he did
when he lost Mother Bengta. For perhaps the first time, the boy was
being subjected to one of life’s serious tests, and stood—as so many
had stood before him—with the choice between sacrificing himself and
sacrificing others. His love for his father, boyish pride, the sense of
duty that is the social dower of the poor—the one thing with the
other—determined his choice. He stood the test, but not bravely; he
howled loudly the whole time, while, with his eyes fixed immovably upon
the Evil One and his hell-hounds, he crept back for the sack and then
dragged it after him at a quick run up the street.

No one is perhaps a hero until the danger is over. But even then Pelle
had no opportunity of shuddering at his own courage; for no sooner was
he out of the reach of the black man, than his terror took a new form.
What had become of his father? He had said he would be back again
directly! Supposing he never came back at all! Perhaps he had gone away
so as to get rid of his little boy, who was only a trouble and made it
difficult for him to get a situation.

Pelle felt despairingly convinced that it must be so, as, crying, he
went off with the sack. The same thing had happened to other children
with whom he was well acquainted; but they came to the pancake cottage
and were quite happy, and Pelle himself would be sure to—perhaps find
the king and be taken in there and have the little princes for his
playmates, and his own little palace to live in. But Father Lasse
shouldn’t have a thing, for now Pelle was angry and vindictive,
although he was crying just as unrestrainedly. He would let him stand
and knock at the door and beg to come in for three days, and only when
he began to cry—no, he would have to let him in at once, for to see
Father Lasse cry hurt him more than anything else in the world. But he
shouldn’t have a single one of the nails Pelle had filled his pockets
with down in the timber-yard; and when the king’s wife brought them
coffee in the morning before they were up——

But here both his tears and his happy imaginings ceased, for out of a
tavern at the top of the street came Father Lasse’s own living self. He
looked in excellent spirits and held a bottle in his hand.

“Danish brandy, laddie!” he cried, waving the bottle. “Hats off to the
Danish brandy! But what have you been crying for? Oh, you were afraid?
And why were you afraid? Isn’t your father’s name Lasse—Lasse Karlsson
from Kungstorp? And he’s not one to quarrel with; he hits hard, he
does, when he’s provoked. To come and frighten good little boys! They’d
better look out! Even if the whole wide world were full of naming
devils, Lasse’s here and you needn’t be afraid!”

During all this fierce talk he was tenderly wiping the boy’s tear-
stained cheeks and nose with his rough hand, and taking the sack upon
his back again. There was something touchingly feeble about his
stooping figure, as, boasting and comforting, he trudged down again to
the harbor holding the boy by the hand. He tottered along in his big
waterproof boots, the tabs of which stuck out at the side and bore an
astonishing resemblance to Pelle’s ears; out of the gaping pockets of
his old winter coat protruded on one side his red pocket-handkerchief,
on the other the bottle. He had become a little looser in his
knee-joints now, and the sack threatened momentarily to get the upper
hand of him, pushing him forward and forcing him to go at a trot down
the hill. He looked decrepit, and perhaps his boastful words helped to
produce this effect; but his eyes beamed confidently, and he smiled
down at the boy, who ran along beside him.

They drew near to the shed, and Pelle turned cold with fear, for the
black man was still standing there. He went round to the other side of
his father, and tried to pull him out in a wide curve over the harbor
square. “There he is again,” he whimpered.

“So that’s what was after you, is it?” said Lasse, laughing heartily;
“and he’s made of wood, too! Well, you really are the bravest laddie I
ever knew! I should almost think you might be sent out to fight a
trussed chicken, if you had a stick in your hand!” Lasse went on
laughing, and shook the boy goodnaturedly. But Pelle was ready to sink
into the ground with shame.

Down by the custom-house they met a bailiff who had come too late for
the steamer and had engaged no laborers. He stopped his cart and asked
Lasse if he was looking for a place.

“Yes, we both want one,” answered Lasse, briskly. “We want to be at the
same farm—as the fox said to the goose.”

The bailiff was a big, strong man, and Pelle shuddered in admiration of
his father who could dare to speak to him so boldly.

But the great man laughed good-humoredly. “Then I suppose he’s to be
foreman?” he said, flicking at Pelle with his whip.

“Yes, he certainly will be some day,” said Lasse, with conviction.

“He’ll probably eat a few bushels of salt first. Well, I’m in want of a
herdsman, and will give you a hundred krones for a year—although it’ll
be confounded hard for you to earn them from what I can see. There’ll
always be a crust of bread for the boy, but of course he’ll have to do
what little he can. You’re his grandfather, I suppose?”

“I’m his father—in the sight of God and man,” answered Lasse, proudly.

“Oh, indeed! Then you must still be fit for something, if you’ve come
by him honestly. But climb up, if you know what’s for your own good,
for I haven’t time to stand here. You won’t get such an offer every
day.”

Pelle thought a hundred krones was a fearful amount of money; Lasse, on
the contrary, as the older and more sensible, had a feeling that it was
far too little. But, though he was not aware of it yet, the experiences
of the morning had considerably dimmed the brightness of his outlook on
life. On the other hand, the dram had made him reckless and
generously-minded.

“All right then,” he said with a wave of the hand. “But the master must
understand that we won’t have salt herring and porridge three times a
day. We must have a proper bedroom too—and be free on Sundays.” He
lifted the sack and the boy up into the cart, and then climbed up
himself.

The bailiff laughed. “I see you’ve been here before, old man. But I
think we shall be able to manage all that. You shall have roast pork
stuffed with raisins and rhubarb jelly with pepper on it, just as often
as you like to open your mouth.”

They drove down to the quay for the chest, and then out toward the
country again. Lasse, who recognized one thing and another, explained
it all in full to the boy, taking a pull at the bottle between whiles;
but the bailiff must not see this. Pelle was cold and burrowed into the
straw, where he crept close up to his father.

“You take a mouthful,” whispered Lasse, passing the bottle to him
cautiously. “But take care that he doesn’t see, for he’s a sly one.
He’s a Jute.”

Pelle would not have a dram. “What’s a Jute?” he asked in a whisper.

“A Jute? Good gracious me, laddie, don’t you know that? It was the
Jutes that crucified Christ. That’s why they have to wander all over
the world now, and sell flannel and needles, and such-like; and they
always cheat wherever they go. Don’t you remember the one that cheated
Mother Bengta of her beautiful hair? Ah, no, that was before your time.
That was a Jute too. He came one day when I wasn’t at home, and
unpacked all his fine wares—combs and pins with blue glass heads, and
the finest head-kerchiefs. Women can’t resist such trash; they’re like
what we others are when some one holds a brandy-bottle to our nose.
Mother Bengta had no money, but that sly devil said he would give her
the finest handkerchief if she would let him cut off just the end of
her plait. And then he went and cut it off close up to her head. My
goodness, but she was like flint and steel when she was angry! She
chased him out of the house with a rake. But he took the plait with
him, and the handkerchief was rubbish, as might have been expected. For
the Jutes are cunning devils, who crucified——” Lasse began at the
beginning again.

Pelle did not pay much attention to his father’s soft murmuring. It was
something about Mother Bengta, but she was dead now and lay in the
black earth; she no longer buttoned his under-vest down the back, or
warmed his hands when they were cold. So they put raisins into roast
pork in this country, did they? Money must be as common as dirt! There
was none lying about in the road, and the houses and farms were not so
very fine either. But the strangest thing was that the earth here was
of the same color as that at home, although it was a foreign country.
He had seen a map in Tommelilla, in which each country had a different
color. So that was a lie!

Lasse had long since talked himself out, and slept with his head upon
the boy’s back. He had forgotten to hide the bottle.

Pelle was just going to push it down into the straw when the bailiff
—who as a matter of fact was not a Jute, but a Zeelander—happened to
turn round and caught sight of it. He told the boy to throw it into the
ditch.

By midday they reached their destination. Lasse awoke as they drove on
to the stone paving of the large yard, and groped mechanically in the
straw. But suddenly he recollected where he was, and was sober in an
instant. So this was their new home, the only place they had to stay in
and expect anything of on this earth! And as he looked out over the big
yard, where the dinner-bell was just sounding and calling servants and
day-laborers out of all the doors, all his self-confidence vanished. A
despairing feeling of helplessness overwhelmed him, and made his face
tremble with impotent concern for his son.

His hands shook as he clambered down from the wagon; he stood
irresolute and at the mercy of all the inquiring glances from the steps
down to the basement of the big house. They were talking about him and
the boy, and laughing already. In his confusion he determined to make
as favorable a first impression as possible, and began to take off his
cap to each one separately; and the boy stood beside him and did the
same. They were rather like the clowns at a fair, and the men round the
basement steps laughed aloud and bowed in imitation, and then began to
call to them; but the bailiff came out again to the cart, and they
quickly disappeared down the steps. From the house itself there came a
far-off, monotonous sound that never left off, and insensibly added to
their feeling of depression.

“Don’t stand there playing the fool!” said the bailiff sharply. “Be off
down to the others and get something to eat! You’ll have plenty of time
to show off your monkey-tricks to them afterwards.”

At these encouraging words, the old man took the boy’s hand and went
across to the basement steps with despair in his heart, mourning
inwardly for Tommelilla and Kungstorp. Pelle clung close to him in
fear. The unknown had suddenly become an evil monster in the
imagination of both of them.

Down in the basement passage the strange, persistent sound was louder,
and they both knew that it was that of a woman weeping.




II


Stone Farm, which for the future was to be Lasse and Pelle’s home, was
one of the largest farms on the island. But old people knew that when
their grandparents were children, it had been a crofter’s cottage where
only two horses were kept, and belonged to a certain Vevest Köller, a
grandson of Jens Kofod, the liberator of Bornholm. During his time, the
cottage became a farm. He worked himself to death on it, and grudged
food both for himself and the others. And these two things—poor living
and land-grabbing—became hereditary in that family.

The fields in this part of the island had been rock and heather not
many generations since. Poor people had broken up the ground, and worn
themselves out, one set after another, to keep it in cultivation. Round
about Stone Farm lived only cottagers and men owning two horses, who
had bought their land with toil and hunger, and would as soon have
thought of selling their parents’ grave as their little property; they
stuck to it until they died or some misfortune overtook them.

But the Stone Farm family were always wanting to buy and extend their
property, and their chance only came through their neighbors’
misfortunes. Wherever a bad harvest or sickness or ill luck with his
beasts hit a man hard enough to make him reel, the Köllers bought. Thus
Stone Farm grew, and acquired numerous buildings and much importance;
it became as hard a neighbor as the sea is, when it eats up the
farmer’s land, field by field, and nothing can be done to check it.
First one was eaten up and then another. Every one knew that his turn
would come sooner or later. No one goes to law with the sea; but all
the ills and discomfort that brooded over the poor man’s life came from
Stone Farm. The powers of darkness dwelt there, and frightened souls
pointed to it always. “That’s well-manured land,” the people of the
district would say, with a peculiar intonation that held a curse; but
they ventured no further.

The Köller family was not sentimental; it throve capitally in the
sinister light that fell upon the farm from so many frightened minds,
and felt it as power. The men were hard drinkers and card-players; but
they never drank so much as to lose sight and feeling; and if they
played away a horse early in the evening, they very likely won two in
the course of the night.

When Lasse and Pelle came to Stone Farm, the older cottagers still
remembered the farmer of their childhood, Janus Köller, the one who did
more to improve things than any one else. In his youth he once, at
midnight, fought with the devil up in the church-tower, and overcame
him; and after that everything succeeded with him. Whatever might or
might not have been the reason, it is certain that in his time one
after another of his neighbors was ruined, and Janus went round and
took over their holdings. If he needed another horse, he played for and
won it at loo; and it was the same with everything. His greatest
pleasure was to break in wild horses, and those who happened to have
been born at midnight on Christmas Eve could distinctly see the Evil
One sitting on the box beside him and holding the reins. He came to a
bad end, as might have been expected. One morning early, the horses
came galloping home to the farm, and he was found lying by the roadside
with his head smashed against a tree.

His son was the last master of Stone Farm of that family. He was a wild
devil, with much that was good in him. If any one differed from him, he
knocked him down; but he always helped those who got into trouble. In
this way no one ever left house and home; and as he had the family
fondness for adding to the farm, he bought land up among the rocks and
heather. But he wisely let it lie as it was. He attached many to the
farm by his assistance, and made them so dependent that they never
became free again. His tenants had to leave their own work when he sent
for them, and he was never at a loss for cheap labor. The food he
provided was scarcely fit for human beings, but he always ate of the
same dish himself. And the priest was with him at the last; so there
was no fault to find with his departure from this life.

He had married twice, but his only child was a daughter by the second
wife, and there was something not quite right about her. She was a
woman at the age of eleven, and made up to any one she met; but no one
dared so much as look at her, for they were afraid of the farmer’s gun.
Later on she went to the other extreme, and dressed herself up like a
man, and went about out on the rocks instead of busying herself with
something at home; and she let no one come near her.

Kongstrup, the present master of Stone Farm, had come to the island
about twenty years before, and even now no one could quite make him
out. When he first came he used to wander about on the heath and do
nothing, just as she did; so it was hardly to be wondered at that he
got into trouble and had to marry her. But it was dreadful!

He was a queer fellow; but perhaps that was what people were like where
he came from? He first had one idea and then another, raised wages when
no one had asked him to, and started stone-quarrying with contract
work. And so he went on with his foolish tricks to begin with, and let
his cottagers do as they liked about coming to work at the farm. He
even went so far as to send them home in wet weather to get in their
corn, and let his own stand and be ruined. But things went all wrong of
course, as might well be imagined, and gradually he had to give in, and
abandon all his foolish ideas.

The people of the district submitted to this condition of dependence
without a murmur. They had been accustomed, from father to son, to go
in and out of the gates of Stone Farm, and do what was required of
them, as dutifully as if they had been serfs of the land. As a set-off
they allowed all their leaning toward the tragic, all the terrors of
life and gloomy mysticism, to center round Stone Farm. They let the
devil roam about there, play loo with the men for their souls, and
ravish the women; and they took off their caps more respectfully to the
Stone Farm people than to any one else.

All this had changed a little as years went on; the sharp points of the
superstition had been blunted a little. But the bad atmosphere that
hangs over large estates—over all great accumulations of what should
belong to the many—also hung heavy over Stone Farm. It was the judgment
passed by the people, their only revenge for themselves and theirs.

Lasse and Pelle were quickly aware of the oppressive atmosphere, and
began to see with the half-frightened eyes of the others, even before
they themselves had heard very much. Lasse especially thought he could
never be quite happy here, because of the heaviness that always seemed
to surround them. And then that weeping that no one could quite account
for!

All through the long, bright day, the sound of weeping came from the
rooms of Stone Farm, like the refrain of some sad folk-song. Now at
last it had stopped. Lasse was busying himself with little things in
the lower yard, and he still seemed to have the sound in his ears. It
was sad, so sad, with this continual sound of a woman weeping, as if a
child were dead, or as if she were left alone with her shame. And what
could there be to weep for, when you had a farm of several hundred
acres, and lived in a high house with twenty windows!

“Riches are nought but a gift from the Lord,
But poverty, that is in truth a reward.
They who wealth do possess
Never know happiness,
While the poor man’s heart is ever contented!”


So sang Karna over in the dairy, and indeed it was true! If only Lasse
knew where he was to get the money for a new smock-frock for the little
lad, he would never envy any one on this earth; though it would be nice
to have money for tobacco and a dram now and then, if it was not unfair
to any one else.

Lasse was tidying up the dung-heap. He had finished his midday work in
the stable, and was taking his time about it; it was only a job he did
between whiles. Now and then he glanced furtively up at the high
windows and put a little more energy into his work; but weariness had
the upper hand. He would have liked to take a little afternoon nap, but
did not dare. All was quiet on the farm. Pelle had been sent on an
errand to the village shop for the kitchen-folk, and all the men were
in the fields covering up the last spring corn. Stone Farm was late
with this.

The agricultural pupil now came out of the stable, which he had entered
from the other side, so as to come upon Lasse unexpectedly. The bailiff
had sent him. “Is that you, you nasty spy!” muttered Lasse when he saw
him. “Some day I’ll kill you!” But he took off his cap with the deepest
respect. The tall pupil went up the yard without looking at him, and
began to talk nonsense with the maids down in the wash-house. He
wouldn’t do that if the men were at home, the scarecrow!

Kongstrup came out on to the steps, and stood for a little while
looking at the weather; then he went down to the cow-stable. How big he
was! He quite filled the stable doorway. Lasse put down his fork and
hastened in in case he was wanted.

“Well, how are you getting on, old man?” asked the farmer kindly. “Can
you manage the work?”

“Oh, yes, I get through it,” answered Lasse; “but that’s about all.
It’s a lot of animals for one man.”

Kongstrup stood feeling the hind quarters of a cow. “You’ve got the boy
to help you, Lasse. Where is he, by the by? I don’t see him.”

“He’s gone to the village shop for the women-folk.”

“Indeed? Who told him to go?”

“I think it was the mistress herself.”

“H’m. Is it long since he went?”

“Yes, some time. He ought soon to be back now.”

“Get hold of him when he comes, and send him up to me with the things,
will you?”

Pelle was rather frightened at having to go up to the office, and
besides the mistress had told him to keep the bottle well hidden under
his smock. The room was very high, and on the walls hung splendid guns;
and up upon a shelf stood cigar-boxes, one upon another, right up to
the ceiling, just as if it were a tobacco-shop. But the strangest thing
of all was that there was a fire in the stove, now, in the middle of
May, and with the window open! It must be that they didn’t know how to
get rid of all their money. But wherever were the money-chests?

All this and much more Pelle observed while he stood just inside the
door upon his bare feet, not daring from sheer nervousness to raise his
eyes. Then the farmer turned round in his chair, and drew him toward
him by the collar. “Now let’s see what you’ve got there under your
smock, my little man!” he said kindly.

“It’s brandy,” said Pelle, drawing forth the bottle. “The mistress said
I wasn’t to let any one see it.”

“You’re a clever boy,” said Kongstrup, patting him on the cheek.
“You’ll get on in the world one of these days. Now give me the bottle
and I’ll take it out to your mistress without letting any one see.” He
laughed heartily.

Pelle handed him the bottle—_there_ stood money in piles on the
writing-table, thick round two-krone pieces one upon another! Then why
didn’t Father Lasse get the money in advance that he had begged for?

The mistress now came in, and the farmer at once went and shut the
window. Pelle wanted to go, but she stopped him. “You’ve got some
things for me, haven’t you?” she said.

“I’ve received the _things,_” said Kongstrup. “You shall have them—when
the boy’s gone.”

But she remained at the door. She would keep the boy there to be a
witness that her husband withheld from her things that were to be used
in the kitchen; every one should know it.

Kongstrup walked up and down and said nothing. Pelle expected he would
strike her, for she called him bad names—much worse than Mother Bengta
when Lasse came home merry from Tommelilla. But he only laughed. “Now
that’ll do,” he said, leading her away from the door, and letting the
boy out.

Lasse did not like it. He had thought the farmer was interfering to
prevent them all from making use of the boy, when he so much needed his
help with the cattle; and now it had taken this unfortunate turn!

“And so it was brandy!” he repeated. “Then I can understand it. But I
wonder how she dares set upon him like that when it’s with _her_ the
fault lies. He must be a good sort of fellow.”

“He’s fond of drink himself,” said Pelle, who had heard a little about
the farmer’s doings.

“Yes, but a woman! That’s quite another thing. Remember they’re fine
folk. Well, well, it doesn’t become us to find fault with our betters;
we have enough to do in looking after ourselves. But I only hope she
won’t send you on any more of her errands, or we may fall between two
stools.”

Lasse went to his work. He sighed and shook his head while he dragged
the fodder out. He was not at all happy.




III


There was something exhilarating in the wealth of sunshine that filled
all space without the accompaniment of corresponding heat. The spring
moisture was gone from the air, and the warm haze of summer had not yet
come. There was only light—light over the green fields and the sea
beyond, light that drew the landscape in clear lines against the blue
atmosphere, and breathed a gentle, pleasant warmth.

It was a day in the beginning of June—the first real summer day; and it
was Sunday.

Stone Farm lay bathed in sunshine. The clear golden light penetrated
everywhere; and where it could not reach, dark colors trembled like a
hot, secret breath out into the light. Open windows and doors looked
like veiled eyes in the midst of the light, and where the roof lay in
shadow, it had the appearance of velvet.

It was quiet up in the big house to-day; it was a day of rest from
wrangling too.

The large yard was divided into two by a fence, the lower part
consisting in the main of a large, steaming midden, crossed by planks
in various directions, and at the top a few inverted wheelbarrows. A
couple of pigs lay half buried in the manure, asleep, and a busy flock
of hens were eagerly scattering the pile of horse-dung from the last
morning clearance. A large cock stood in the middle of the flock,
directing the work like a bailiff.

In the upper yard a flock of white pigeons were pecking corn off the
clean stone paving. Outside the open coach-house door, a groom was
examining the dog-cart, while inside stood another groom, polishing the
best harness.

The man at the dog-cart was in shirt-sleeves and newly-polished
top-boots; he had a youthful, elastic frame, which assumed graceful
attitudes as he worked. He wore his cap on the back of his head, and
whistled softly while he cleaned the wheels outside and in, and sent
stolen glances down to the wash-house, where, below the window, one of
the maids was going through her Sunday ablutions, with shoulders and
arms bare, and her chemise pushed down below her bosom.

The big dairymaid, Karna, went past him to the pump with two large
buckets. As she returned, she splashed some water on to one of his
boots, and he looked up with an oath. She took this as an invitation to
stop, and put down her pails with a cautious glance up at the windows
of the big house.

“You’ve not had all the sleep you ought to have had, Gustav,” she said
teasingly, and laughed.

“Then it isn’t your fault, at any rate,” he answered roughly. “Can you
patch my everyday trousers for me to-day?”

“No, thank you! I don’t mend for another to get all the pleasant
words!”

“Then you can leave it alone! There are plenty who’ll mend for me
without you!” And he bent again to his work.

“I’ll see if I can get time,” said the big woman meekly. “But I’ve got
all the work in the place to do by myself this afternoon; the others
are all going out.”

“Yes, I see Bodil’s washing herself,” said Gustav, sending a squirt of
tobacco-juice out of his mouth in the direction of the wash-house
window. “I suppose she’s going to meeting, as she’s doing it so
thoroughly.”

Karna looked cunning. “She asked to be free because she wanted to go to
church. She go to church! I should just like to see her! No, she’s
going down to the tailor’s in the village, and there I suppose she’ll
meet Malmberg, a townsman of hers. I wonder she isn’t above having
anything to do with a married man.”

“She can go on the spree with any one she likes, for all I care,”
answered Gustav, kicking the last wheel into place with his foot, while
Karna stood looking at him kindly. But the next moment she spied a face
behind the curtains up in one of the windows, and hurried off with her
pails. Gustav spat contemptuously between his teeth after her. She was
really too old for his seventeen years; she must be at least forty; and
casting another long look at Bodil, he went across to the coachhouse
with oil-can and keys.

The high white house that closed the yard at its upper end, had not
been built right among the other buildings, but stood proudly aloof,
unconnected with them except by two strips of wooden paling. It had
gables on both sides, and a high basement, in which were the servants’
hall, the maids’ bedrooms, the wash-house, the mangling-room, and the
large storerooms. On the gable looking on to the yard was a clock that
did not go. Pelle called the building the Palace, and was not a little
proud of being allowed to enter the basement. The other people on the
farm did not give it such a nice name.

He was the only one whose awe of the House had nothing sinister about
it; others regarded it in the light of a hostile fortress. Every one
who crossed the paved upper yard, glanced involuntarily up at the high
veiled windows, behind which an eye might secretly be kept upon all
that went on below. It was, a little like passing a row of cannons’
mouths—it made one a little unsteady on one’s feet; and no one crossed
the clean pavement unless he was obliged. On the other hand they went
freely about the other half of the yard, which was just as much
overlooked by the House.

Down there two of the lads were playing. One of them had seized the
other’s cap and run off with it, and a wild chase ensued, in at one
barn-door and out at another all round the yard, to the accompaniment
of mischievous laughter and breathless exclamations. The yard-dog
barked with delight and tumbled madly about on its chain in its desire
to join in the game. Up by the fence the robber was overtaken and
thrown to the ground; but he managed to toss the cap up into the air,
and it descended right in front of the high stone steps of the House.

“Oh, you mean beast!” exclaimed the owner of the cap, in a voice of
despairing reproach, belaboring the other with the toes of his boots.
“Oh, you wretched bailiff’s sneak!” He suddenly stopped and measured
the distance with an appraising eye. “Will you stand me half a pint if
I dare go up and fetch the cap?” he asked in a whisper. The other
nodded and sat up quickly to see what would come of it. “Swear? You
won’t try and back out of it?” he said, lifting his hand adjuringly.
His companion solemnly drew his finger across his throat, as if cutting
it, and the oath was taken. The one who had lost the cap, hitched up
his trousers and pulled himself together, his whole figure stiffening
with determination; then he put his hands upon the fence, vaulted it,
and walked with bent head and firm step across the yard, looking like
one who had staked his all upon one card. When he had secured the cap,
and turned his back upon the House, he sent a horrible grimace down the
yard.

Bodil now came up from the basement in her best Sunday clothes, with a
black silk handkerchief on her head and a hymn-book in her hand. How
pretty she was! And brave! She went along the whole length of the House
and out! But then she could get a kiss from the farmer any day she
liked.

Outside the farm proper lay a number of large and small outbuildings
—the calves’ stable, the pigsties, the tool-shed, the cart-shed and a
smithy that was no longer used. They were all like so many mysteries,
with trap-doors that led down to pitch-dark, underground beet and
potato cellars, from which, of course, you could get by secret passages
to the strangest places underground, and other trap-doors that led up
to dark lofts, where the most wonderful treasures were preserved in the
form of old lumber.

But Pelle unfortunately had little time to go into all this. Every day
he had to help his father to look after the cattle, and with so large a
herd, the work was almost beyond their power. If he had a moment’s
breathing-space, some one was sure to be after him. He had to fetch
water for the laundry girls, to grease the pupil’s boots and run to the
village shop for spirits or chewing-tobacco for the men. There was
plenty to play with, but no one could bear to see him playing; they
were always whistling for him as if he were a dog.

He tried to make up for it by turning his work into a game, and in many
instances this was possible. Watering the cattle, for instance, was
more fun than any real game, when his father stood out in the yard and
pumped, and the boy only had to guide the water from manger to manger.
When thus occupied, he always felt something like a great engineer. But
on the other hand, much of the other work was too hard to be amusing.

At this moment the boy was wandering about among the outbuildings,
where there was no one to hunt him about. The door to the cow-stable
stood open, and he could hear the continual munching of the cows, now
and then interrupted by a snuff of contentment or the regular rattle of
a chain up and down when a cow rubbed its neck upon the post. There was
a sense of security in the sound of his father’s wooden shoes up and
down the foddering-passage.

Out of the open half-doors of the smaller outbuildings there came a
steamy warmth that smelt pleasantly of calves and pigs. The pigs were
hard at work. All through the long sty there was munching and smacking.
One old sow supped up the liquid through the corners of her mouth,
another snuffed and bubbled with her snout along the bottom of the
trough to find the rotten potatoes under the liquid. Here and there two
pigs were fighting over the trough, and emitting piercing squeals. The
calves put their slobbering noses out at the doors, gazing into the
sunny air and lowing feelingly. One little fellow, after snuffing up
air from the cow-stable in a peculiarly thorough way, turned up his lip
in a foolish grin: it was a bull- calf. He laid his chin upon the
half-door, and tried to jump over, but Pelle drove him down again. Then
he kicked up his hind legs, looked at Pelle out of the corner of his
eye, and stood with arched back, lifting his fore and hindquarters
alternately with the action of a rocking-horse. He was light-headed
with the sun.

Down on the pond, ducks and geese stood upon their heads in the water,
flourishing their red legs in the air. And all at once the whole flock
would have an attack of giddy delight in the sunshine, and splash
screaming from bank to bank, the last part of the way sliding along the
top of the water with a comical wagging of the tail.

Pelle had promised himself much from this couple of hours that were to
be entirely his own, as his father had given him a holiday until the
time came for the midday work. But now he stood in bewilderment,
overwhelmed by the wealth of possibilities. Would it be the best fun to
sail upon the pond on two tail-boards laid one across the other? There
was a manure-cart lying there now to be washed. Or should he go in and
have a game with the tiny calves? Or shoot with the old bellows in the
smithy? If he filled the nozzle with wet earth, and blew hard, quite a
nice shot could come out of it.

Pelle started and tried to make himself invisible. The farmer himself
had come round the corner, and was now standing shading his eyes with
his hand and looking down over the sloping land and the sea. When he
caught sight of Pelle, he nodded without changing his expression, and
said: “Good day, my boy! How are you getting on?” He gazed on, and
probably hardly knew that he had said it and patted the boy on the
shoulder with the end of his stick; the farmer often went about half
asleep.

But Pelle felt it as a caress of a divine nature, and immediately ran
across to the stable to tell his father what had happened to him. He
had an elevating sensation in his shoulder as if he had been knighted;
and he still felt the stick there. An intoxicating warmth flowed from
the place through his little body, sent the adventure mounting to his
head and made him swell with pride. His imagination rose and soared
into the air with some vague, dizzy idea about the farmer adopting him
as his son.

He soon came down again, for in the stable he ran straight into the
arms of the Sunday scrubbing. The Sunday wash was the only great
objection he had to make to life; everything else came and was
forgotten again, but it was always coming again. He detested it,
especially that part of it which had to do with the interior of his
ears. But there was no kind mother to help; Lasse stood ready with a
bucket of cold water, and some soft soap on a piece of broken pot, and
the boy had to divest himself of his clothes. And as if the scrubbing
were not enough, he afterwards had to put on a clean shirt—though,
fortunately, only every other Sunday. The whole thing was nice enough
to look back upon afterwards—like something gone through with, and not
to happen again for a little while.

Pelle stood at the stable door into the yard with a consequential air,
with bristling hair and clean shirt-sleeves, his hands buried in his
trouser pockets. Over his forehead his hair waved in what is called a
“cow’s lick,” said to betoken good fortune; and his face, all screwed
up as it turned towards the bright light, looked the oddest piece of
topsy-turvydom, with not a single feature in its proper place. Pelle
bent the calves of his legs out backwards, and stood gently rocking
himself to and fro as he saw Gustav doing, up on the front-door steps,
where he stood holding the reins, waiting for his master and mistress.

The mistress now appeared, with the farmer, and a maid ran down in
front to the carriage with a little stepladder, and helped her in. The
farmer stood at the top of the steps until she was seated: she had
difficulty in walking. But what a pair of eyes she had! Pelle hastily
looked away when she turned her face down towards the yard. It was
whispered among the men that she could bring misfortune upon any one by
looking at him if she liked. Now Gustav unchained the dog, which
bounded about, barking, in front of the horses as they drove out of the
courtyard.

Anyhow the sun did not shine like this on a week-day. It was quite
dazzling when the white pigeons flew in one flock over the yard,
turning as regularly as if they were a large white sheet flapping in
the sunshine; the reflection from their wings flashed over the
dung-heap and made the pigs lift their heads with an inquiring grunt.
Above, in their rooms the men sat playing “Sixty-six,” or tipping
wooden shoes, and Gustav began to play “Old Noah” on his concertina.

Pelle picked his way across the upper part of the yard to the big
dog-kennel, which could be turned on a pivot according to the direction
of the wind. He seated himself upon the angle of the roof, and made a
merry-go-round of it by pushing off with his foot every time he passed
the fence. Suddenly it occurred to him that he himself was everybody’s
dog, and had better hide himself; so he dropped down, crept into the
kennel, and curled himself up on the straw with his head between his
fore-paws. There he lay for a little while, staring at the fence and
panting with his tongue hanging out of his mouth. Then an idea came
into his head so suddenly as to make him forget all caution; and the
next moment he was sliding full tilt down the railing of the front-door
steps.

He had done this seventeen times and was deeply engrossed in the
thought of reaching fifty, when he heard a sharp whistle from the big
coach-house door. The farm pupil stood there beckoning him. Pelle,
crestfallen, obeyed the call, bitterly regretting his thoughtlessness.
He was most likely wanted now to grease boots again, perhaps for them
all.

The pupil drew him inside the door, which he shut. It was dark, and the
boy, coming in out of the bright daylight, could distinguish nothing;
what he made out little by little assumed shapeless outlines to his
frightened imagination. Voices laughed and growled confusedly in his
ears, and hands that seemed to him enormous pulled him about. Terror
seized him, and with it came crazy, disconnected recollections of
stories of robbery and murder, and he began to scream with fright. A
big hand covered the whole of his face, and in the silence that
followed his stifled scream, he heard a voice out in the yard, calling
to the maids to come and see something funny.

He was too paralyzed with terror to know what was being done with him,
and only wondered faintly what there was funny out there in the
sunshine. Would he ever see the sun again, he wondered?

As if in answer to his thought, the door was at that moment thrown
open. The light poured in and he recognized the faces about him, and
found himself standing half naked in the full daylight, his trousers
down about his heels and his shirt tucked up under his waistcoat. The
pupil stood at one side with a carriage-whip, with which he flicked at
the boy’s naked body, crying in a tone of command: “Run!” Pelle, wild
with terror and confusion, dashed into the yard, but there stood the
maids, and at sight of him they screamed with laughter, and he turned
to fly back into the coach-house. But he was met by the whip, and
forced to return into the daylight, leaping like a kangaroo and calling
forth renewed shouts of laughter. Then he stood still, crying
helplessly, under a shower of coarse remarks, especially from the
maids. He no longer noticed the whip, but only crouched down, trying to
hide himself, until at last he sank in a heap upon the stone paving,
sobbing convulsively.

Karna, large of limb, came rushing up from the basement and forced her
way through the crowd, crimson with rage and scolding as she went. On
her freckled neck and arms were brown marks left by the cows’ tails at
the last milking, looking like a sort of clumsy tattooing. She flung
her slipper in the pupil’s face, and going up to Pelle, wrapped him in
her coarse apron and carried him down to the basement.

When Lasse heard what had happened to the boy, he took a hammer and
went round to kill the farm pupil; and the look in the old man’s eyes
was such that no one desired to get in his way. The pupil had thought
his wisest course was to disappear; and when Lasse found no vent for
his wrath, he fell into a fit of trembling and weeping, and became so
really ill that the men had to administer a good mouthful of spirits to
revive him. This took instant effect, and Lasse was himself again and
able to nod consolingly to the frightened, sobbing Pelle.

“Never mind, laddie!” he said comfortingly. “Never mind! No one has
ever yet got off without being punished, and Lasse’ll break that long
limb of Satan’s head and make his brains spurt out of his nose; you
take my word for it!”

Pelle’s face brightened at the prospect of this forcible redress, and
he crept up into the loft to throw down the hay for the cattle’s midday
meal. Lasse, who was not so fond of climbing, went down the long
passage between the stalls distributing the hay. He was cogitating over
something, and Pelle could hear him talking to himself all the time.
When they had finished, Lasse went to the green chest and brought out a
black silk handkerchief that had been Bengta’s Sunday best. His
expression was solemn as he called Pelle.

“Run over to Karna with this and ask her to accept it. We’re not so
poor that we should let kindness itself go from us empty-handed. But
you mustn’t let any one see it, in case they didn’t like it. Mother
Bengta in her grave won’t be offended; she’d have proposed it herself,
if she could have spoken; but her mouth’s full of earth, poor thing!”
Lasse sighed deeply.

Even then he stood for a little while with the handkerchief in his hand
before giving it to Pelle to run with. He was by no means as sure of
Bengta as his words made out; but the old man liked to beautify her
memory, both in his own and in the boy’s mind. It could not be denied
that she had generally been a little difficult in a case of this kind,
having been particularly jealous; and she might take it into her head
to haunt them because of that handkerchief. Still she had had a heart
for both him and the boy, and it was generally in the right place—they
must say that of her! And for the rest, the Lord must judge her as
kindly as He could.

During the afternoon it was quiet on the farm. Most of the men were out
somewhere, either at the inn or with the quarry-men at the
stone-quarry. The master and mistress were out too; the farmer had
ordered the carriage directly after dinner and had driven to the town,
and half an hour later his wife set off in the pony-carriage —to keep
an eye on him, people said.

Old Lasse was sitting in an empty cow-stall, mending Pelle’s clothes,
while the boy played up and down the foddering passage. He had found in
the herdsman’s room an old boot-jack, which he placed under his knee,
pretending it was a wooden leg, and all the time he was chattering
happily, but not quite so loudly as usual, to his father. The morning’s
experience was still fresh in his mind, and had a subduing effect; it
was as if he had performed some great deed, and was now nervous about
it. There was another circumstance, too, that helped to make him
serious. The bailiff had been over to say that the animals were to go
out the next day. Pelle was to mind the young cattle, so this would be
his last free day, perhaps for the whole summer.

He paused outside the stall where his father sat. “What are you going
to kill him with, father?”

“With the hammer, I suppose.”

“Will you kill him quite dead, as dead as a dog?”

Lasse’s nod boded ill to the pupil. “Yes, indeed I shall!”

“But who’ll read the names for us then?”

The old man shook his head pensively. “That’s true enough!” he
exclaimed, scratching himself first in one place and then in another.
The name of each cow was written in chalk above its stall, but neither
Lasse nor Pelle could read. The bailiff had, indeed, gone through the
names with them once, but it was impossible to remember half a hundred
names after hearing them once—even for the boy, who had such an
uncommon good memory. If Lasse now killed the pupil, then who _would_
help them to make out the names? The bailiff would never stand their
going to him and asking him a second time.

“I suppose we shall have to content ourselves with thrashing him,” said
Lasse meditatively.

The boy went on playing for a little while, and then once more came up
to Lasse.

“Don’t you think the Swedes can thrash all the people in the world,
father?”

The old man looked thoughtful. “Ye-es—yes, I should think so.”

“Yes, because Sweden’s much bigger than the whole world, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s big,” said Lasse, trying to imagine its extent. There were
twenty-four provinces, of which Malmohus was only one, and Ystad
district a small part of that again; and then in one corner of Ystad
district lay Tommelilla, and his holding that he had once thought so
big with its five acres of land, was a tiny little piece of Tommelilla!
Ah, yes, Sweden was big—not bigger than the whole world, of course, for
that was only childish nonsense—but still bigger than all the rest of
the world put together. “Yes, it’s big! But what are you doing,
laddie?”

“Why, can’t you see I’m a soldier that’s had one leg shot off?”

“Oh, you’re an old crippled pensioner, are you? But you shouldn’t do
that, for God doesn’t like things like that. You might become a real
cripple, and that would be dreadful.”

“Oh, He doesn’t see, because He’s in the churches to-day!” answered the
boy; but for safety’s sake he thought it better to leave off. He
stationed himself at the stable-door, whistling, but suddenly came
running in with great eagerness: “Father, there’s the Agricultural!
Shall I run and fetch the whip?”

“No, I expect we’d better leave him alone. It might be the death of
him; fine gentlemen scamps like that can’t stand a licking. The fright
alone might kill him.” Lasse glanced doubtfully at the boy.

Pelle looked very much disappointed. “But suppose he does it again?”

“Oh, no, we won’t let him off without a good fright. I shall pick him
up and hold him out at arm’s length dangling in the air until he begs
for mercy; and then I shall put him down again just as quietly. For
Lasse doesn’t like being angry. Lasse’s a decent fellow.”

“Then you must pretend to let him go while you’re holding him high up
in the air; and then he’ll scream and think he’s going to die, and the
others’ll come and laugh at him.”

“No, no; you mustn’t tempt your father! It might come into my mind to
throw him down, and that would be murder and penal servitude for life,
that would! No, I’ll just give him a good scolding; that’s what a
classy scoundrel like that’ll feel most.”

“Yes, and then you must call him a spindle-shanked clodhopper. That’s
what the bailiff calls him when he’s angry with him.”

“No, I don’t think that would do either; but I’ll speak so seriously
with him that he won’t be likely to forget it in a hurry.”

Pelle was quite satisfied. There was no one like his father, and of
course he would be as good at blowing people up as at everything else.
He had never heard him do it, and he was looking forward to it
immensely while he hobbled along with the boot-jack. He was not using
it as a wooden leg now, for fear of tempting Providence; but he held it
under his arm like a crutch, supporting it on the edge of the
foundation wall, because it was too short. How splendid it would be to
go on two crutches like the parson’s son at home! He could jump over
the very longest puddles.

There was a sudden movement of light and shadow up under the roof, and
when Pelle turned round, he saw a strange boy standing in the doorway
out to the field. He was of the same height as Pelle, but his head was
almost as large as that of a grown man. At first sight it appeared to
be bald all over; but when the boy moved in the sun, his bare head
shone as if covered with silver scales. It was covered with fine,
whitish hair, which was thinly and fairly evenly distributed over the
face and everywhere else; and his skin was pink, as were the whites of
his eyes. His face was all drawn into wrinkles in the strong light, and
the back of his head projected unduly and looked as if it were much too
heavy.

Pelle put his hands in his trouser pockets and went up to him. “What’s
your name?” he said, and tried to expectorate between his front teeth
as Gustav was in the habit of doing. The attempt was a failure,
unfortunately, and the saliva only ran down his chin. The strange boy
grinned.

“Rud,” he said, indistinctly, as if his tongue were thick and
unmanageable. He was staring enviously at Pelle’s trouser pockets. “Is
that your father?” he asked, pointing at Lasse.

“Of course!” said Pelle, consequentially. “And he can thrash
everybody.”

“But my father can buy everybody, because he lives up there.” And Rud
pointed toward the big house.

“Oh, does he really?” said Pelle, incredulously. “Why don’t you live
there with him, then?”

“Why, I’m a bastard-child; mother says so herself.”

“The deuce she does!” said Pelle, stealing a glance at his father on
account of the little oath.

“Yes, when she’s cross. And then she beats me, but then I run away from
her.”

“Oh, you do, do you!” said a voice outside. The boys started and
retreated farther into the stable, as a big, fat woman appeared in the
doorway, and looked angrily round in the dim light. When she caught
sight of Rud, she continued her scolding. Her accent was Swedish.

“So you run away, do you, you cabbage-head! If you’d only run so far
that you couldn’t find your way back again, a body wouldn’t need to
wear herself out thrashing a misbegotten imp like you! You’ll go to the
devil anyhow, so don’t worry yourself about that! So that’s the boy’s
father, is it?” she said, suddenly breaking off as she caught sight of
Lasse.

“Yes, it is,” said Lasse, quietly. “And surely you must be schoolmaster
Johan Pihl’s Johanna from Tommelilla, who left the country nearly
twenty years ago?”

“And surely you must be the smith’s tom-cat from Sulitjelma, who had
twins out of an old wooden shoe the year before last?” retorted the big
woman, imitating his tone of voice.

“Very well; it doesn’t matter to me who you are!” said the old man in
an offended tone. “I’m not a police spy.”

“One would think you were from the way you question. Do you know when
the cattle are to go out?”

“To-morrow, if all’s well. Is it your little boy who’s going to show
Pelle how things go? The bailiff spoke of some one who’d go out with
him and show him the grazing-ground.”

“Yes, it’s that Tom Noddy there. Here, come out so that we can see you
properly, you calf! Oh, the boy’s gone. Very well. Does your boy often
get a thrashing?”

“Oh yes, sometimes,” answered Lasse, who was ashamed to confess that he
never chastised the boy.

“I don’t spare mine either. It’ll take something to make a man of such
rubbish; punishment’s half what he lives on. Then I’ll send him up here
first thing to-morrow morning; but take care he doesn’t show himself in
the yard, or there’ll be no end of a row!”

“The mistress can’t bear to see him, I suppose?” said Lasse.

“You’re just about right. She’s had nothing to do with the making of
that scarecrow. Though you wouldn’t think there was much there to be
jealous about! But I might have been a farmer’s wife at this moment and
had a nice husband too, if that high and mighty peacock up there hadn’t
seduced me. Would you believe that, you cracked old piece of
shoe-leather?” she asked with a laugh, slapping his knee with her hand.

“I can believe it very well,” said Lasse. “For you were as pretty a
girl as might be when you left home.”

“Oh, you and your ‘home’,” she said, mimicking him.

“Well, I can see that you don’t want to leave any footmarks behind you,
and I can quite well pretend to be a stranger, even if I have held you
upon my knee more than once when you were a little thing. But do you
know that your mother’s lying on her deathbed?”

“Oh no! Oh no!” she exclaimed, turning to him a face that was becoming
more and more distorted.

“I went to say good-bye to her before I left home rather more than a
month ago, and she was very ill. ‘Good-bye, Lasse,’ she said, ‘and
thank you for your neighborliness all these years. And if you meet
Johanna over there,’ she said, ‘give her my love. Things have gone
terribly badly with her, from what I’ve heard; but give her my love,
all the same. Johanna child, little child! She was nearest her mother’s
heart, and so she happened to tread upon it. Perhaps it was our fault.
You’ll give her her mother’s love, won’t you, Lasse?’ Those were her
very words, and now she’s most likely dead, so poorly as she was then.”

Johanna Pihl had no command over her feelings. It was evident that she
was not accustomed to weep, for her sobs seemed to tear her to pieces.
No tears came, but her agony was like the throes of child-birth.
“Little mother! Poor little mother!” she said every now and again, as
she sat rocking herself upon the edge of the manger.

“There, there, there!” said Lasse, patting her on the head. “I told
them they had been too hard with you. But what did you want to creep
through that window for—a child of sixteen and in the middle of the
night? You can hardly wonder that they forgot themselves a little, all
the more that he was earning no wages beyond his keep and clothes, and
was a bad fellow at that, who was always losing his place.”

“I was fond of him,” said Johanna, weeping. “He’s the only one I’ve
ever cared for. And I was so stupid that I thought he was fond of me
too, though he’d never seen me.”

“Ah, yes; you were only a child! I said so to your parents. But that
you could think of doing anything so indecent!”

“I didn’t mean to do anything wrong. I only thought that we two ought
to be together as we loved one another. No, I didn’t even think that
then. I only crept in to him, without thinking about it at all. Would
you believe that I was so innocent in those days? And nothing bad
happened either.”

“And nothing happened even?” said Lasse. “But it’s terribly sad to
think how things have turned out. It was the death of your father.”

The big woman began to cry helplessly, and Lasse was almost in tears
himself.

“Perhaps I ought never to have told you,” he said in despair. “But I
thought you must have heard about it. I suppose he thought that he, as
schoolmaster, bore the responsibility for so many, and that you’d
thrown yourself at any one in that way, and a poor farm-servant into
the bargain, cut him to the quick. It’s true enough that he mixed with
us poor folks as if we’d been his equals, but the honor was there all
the same; and he took it hardly when the fine folk wouldn’t look at him
any more. And after all it was nothing at all—nothing happened? But why
didn’t you tell them so?”

Johanna had stopped crying, and now sat with tear-stained, quivering
face, and eyes turned away.

“I did tell them, but they wouldn’t listen. I was found there of
course. I screamed for help when I found out he didn’t even know me,
but was only flattered at my coming, and wanted to take hold of me. And
then the others came running in and found me there. They laughed and
said that I’d screamed because I’d lost my innocence; and I could see
that my parents thought the same. Even they wouldn’t hear of nothing
having happened, so what could the other rabble think? And then they
paid him to come over here, and sent me away to relations.”

“Yes, and then you added to their sorrow by running away.”

“I went after him. I thought he’d get to be fond of me, if only I was
near him. He’d taken service here at Stone Farm, and I took a place
here as housemaid; but there was only one thing he wanted me for, and
that I wouldn’t have if he wasn’t fond of me. So he went about boasting
that I’d run away from home for his sake, and the other thing that was
a lie; so they all thought they could do what they liked with me.
Kongstrup was just married then, but he was no better than the others.
I’d got the place quite by chance, because the other housemaid had had
to go away somewhere to lie in; so I was awfully careful. He got her
married afterwards to a quarryman at the quarries.”

“So that’s the sort of man he is!” exclaimed Lasse. “I had my doubts
about him. But what became of the other fellow?”

“He went to work in the quarry when we’d been at the farm a couple of
years and he’d done me all the harm he could. While he was there, he
drank and quarreled most of the time. I often went to see him, for I
couldn’t get him out of my head; but he was always drunk. At last he
couldn’t stay there any longer, and disappeared, and then we heard that
he was in Nordland, playing Hell among the rocks at Blaaholt. He helped
himself to whatever he wanted at the nearest place he could find it,
and knocked people down for nothing at all. And one day they said that
he’d been declared an outlaw, so that any one that liked could kill
him. I had great confidence in the master, who, after all, was the only
person that wished me well; and he comforted me by saying that it would
be all right: Knut would know how to take care of himself.”

“Knut? Was it Knut Engström?” asked Lasse. “Well, then, I’ve heard
about him. He was breaking out as wild as the devil the last time I was
in this country, and assaulted people on the high-road in broad
daylight. He killed one man with a hammer, and when they caught him,
he’d made a long gash on his neck from the back right up to his eye.
The other man had done that, he said; he’d only defended himself. So
they couldn’t do anything to him. So that was the man, was it! But who
was it he was living with, then? They said he lived in a shed on the
heath that summer, and had a woman with him.”

“I ran away from service, and pretended to the others that I was going
home. I’d heard what a wretched state he was in. They said he was
gashed all over his head. So I went up and took care of him.”

“Then you gave in at last,” said Lasse, with a roguish wink.

“He beat me every day,” she answered hoarsely. “And when he couldn’t
get his way, he drove me away at last. I’d set my mind on his being
fond of me first.” Her voice had grown coarse and hard again.

“Then you deserved a good whipping for taking a fancy to such a
ruffian! And you may be glad your mother didn’t get to know anything
about that, for she’d never have survived it.”

At the word “mother” Johanna started. “Every one must look after
themselves,” she said in a hard voice. “I’ve had more to look to than
mother, and see how fat I’ve grown.”

Lasse shook his head. “I shouldn’t care to fight with you now. But what
happened to you afterwards?”

“I came back to Stone Farm again at Martinmas, but the mistress
wouldn’t take me on again, for she preferred my room to my company. But
Kongstrup got his way by making me dairymaid. He was as kind to me as
ever, for all that I’d stood out against him for nine years. But at
last the magistrate got tired of having Knut going about loose; he made
too much disturbance. So they had a hunt for him up on the heath. They
didn’t catch him, but he must have come back to the quarry to hide
himself, for one day when they were blasting there, his body came out
among the bits of rock, all smashed up. They drove the pieces down here
to the farm, and it made me so ill to see him come to me like that,
that I had to go to bed. There I lay shivering day and night, for it
seemed as if he’d come to me in his sorest need. Kongstrup sat with me
and comforted me when the others were at work, and he took advantage of
my misery to get his way.

“There was a younger brother of the farmer on the hill who liked me.
He’d been in America in his early days, and had plenty of money. He
didn’t care a rap what people said, and every single year he proposed
to me, always on New Year’s Day. He came that year too, and now that
Knut was dead, I couldn’t have done better than have taken him and been
mistress of a farm; but I had to refuse him after all, and I can tell
you it was hard when I made the discovery. Kongstrup wanted to send me
away when I told him about it; but that I would not have. I meant to
stay and have my child born here on the farm to which it belonged. He
didn’t care a bit about me any longer, the mistress looked at me with
her evil eyes every day, and there was no one that was kind to me. I
wasn’t so hard then as I am now, and it was all I could do to keep from
crying always. I became hard then. When anything was the matter, I
clenched my teeth so that no one should deride me. I was working in the
field the very day it happened, too. The boy was born in the middle of
a beet-field, and I carried him back to the farm myself in my apron. He
was deformed even then: the mistress’s evil eyes had done it. I said to
myself that she should always have the changeling in her sight, and
refused to go away. The farmer couldn’t quite bring himself to turn me
out by force, and so he put me into the house down by the shore.”

“Then perhaps you work on the farm here in the busy seasons?” asked
Lasse.

She sniffed contemptuously. “Work! So you think I need do that?
Kongstrup has to pay me for bringing up his son, and then there are
friends that come to me, now one and now another, and bring a little
with them—when they haven’t spent it all in drink. You may come down
and see me this evening. I’ll be good to you too.”

“No, thank you!” said Lasse, gravely. “I am a human being too, but I
won’t go to one who’s sat on my knee as if she’d been my own child.”

“Have you any gin, then?” she asked, giving him a sharp nudge.

Lasse thought there was some, and went to see. “No, not a drop,” he
said, returning with the bottle. “But I’ve got something for you here
that your mother asked me to give you as a keepsake. It was lucky I
happened to remember it.” And he handed her a packet, and looked on
happily while she opened it, feeling pleased on her account. It was a
hymn-book. “Isn’t it a beauty?” he said. “With a gold cross and
clasp—and then, it’s your mother’s.”

“What’s the good of that to me?” asked Johanna. “I don’t sing hymns.”

“Don’t you?” said Lasse, hurt. “But your mother has never known but
that you’ve kept the faith you had as a child, so you must forgive her
this once.”

“Is that all you’ve got for me?” she asked, pushing the book off her
lap.

“Yes, it is,” said Lasse, his voice trembling; and he picked up the
book.

“Who’s going to have the rest, then?”

“Well, the house was leased, and there weren’t many things left, for
it’s a long time since your father died, remember. Where you should
have been, strangers have filled the daughter’s place; and I suppose
those who’ve looked after her will get what there is. But perhaps you’d
still be in time, if you took the first steamer.”

“No, thank you! Go home and be stared at and play the penitent—no,
thank you! I’d rather the strangers got what’s left. And mother— well,
if she’s lived without my help, I suppose she can die without it too.
Well, I must be getting home. I wonder what’s become of the future
master of Stone Farm?” She laughed loudly.

Lasse would have taken his oath that she had been quite sober, and yet
she walked unsteadily as she went behind the calves’ stables to look
for her son. It was on his lips to ask whether she would not take the
hymn-book with her, but he refrained. She was not in the mood for it
now, and she might mock God; so he carefully wrapped up the book and
put it away in the green chest.


At the far end of the cow-stable a space was divided off with boards.
It had no door, and the boards were an inch apart, so that it resembled
a crate. This was the herdsman’s room. Most of the space was occupied
by a wide legless bedstead made of rough boards knocked together, with
nothing but the stone floor to rest on. Upon a deep layer of rye straw
the bed-clothes lay in a disordered heap, and the thick striped
blankets were stiff with dried cow-dung, to which feathers and bits of
straw had adhered.

Pelle lay curled up in the middle of the bed with the down quilt up to
his chin, while Lasse sat on the edge, turning over the things in the
green chest and talking to himself. He was going through his Sunday
devotions, taking out slowly, one after another, all the little things
he had brought from the broken-up home. They were all purely useful
things—balls of cotton, scraps of stuff, and such-like, that were to be
used to keep his own and the boy’s clothes in order; but to him each
thing was a relic to be handled with care, and his heart bled every
time one of them came to an end. With each article he laid down, he
slowly repeated what Bengta had said it was for when she lay dying and
was trying to arrange everything for him and the boy: “Wool for the
boy’s gray socks. Pieces to lengthen the sleeves of his Sunday jacket.
Mind you don’t wear your stockings too long before you mend them.” They
were the last wishes of the dying woman, and they were followed in the
smallest detail. Lasse remembered them word for word, in spite of his
bad memory.

Then there were little things that had belonged to Bengta herself,
cheap finery that all had its happy memory of fairs and holidays, which
he recalled in his muttered reverie.

Pelle liked this subdued murmur that he did not need to listen to or
answer, and that was so pleasant to doze off in. He lay looking out
sleepily at the bright sky, tired and with a vague feeling of something
unpleasant that was past.

Suddenly he started. He had heard the door of the cow-stable open, and
steps upon the long foddering-passage. It was the pupil. He recognized
the hated step at once.

He thrilled with delight. Now that fellow would be made to understand
that he mustn’t do anything to boys with fathers who could hold a man
out at arm’s length and scold! oh, much worse than the bailiff. He sat
up and looked eagerly at his father.

“Lasse!” came a voice from the end of the tables.

The old man growled sullenly, stirred uneasily, but did not rise.

“Las-se!” came again, after a little, impatiently and in a tone of
command.

“Yes,” said Lasse slowly, rising and going out.

“Can’t you answer when you’re called, you old Swedish rascal? Are you
deaf?”

“Oh, I can answer well enough,” said Lasse, in a trembling voice. “But
Mr. Pupil oughtn’t to—I’m a father, let me tell you—and a father’s
heart——”

“You may be a monthly nurse for all I care, but you’ve got to answer
when you’re called, or else I’ll get the bailiff to give you a
talking-to. Do you understand?”

“Yes, oh yes!—Mr. Pupil must excuse me, but I didn’t hear.”

“Well, will you please remember that Aspasia’s not to go out to pasture
to-morrow.”

“Is she going to calve?”

“Yes, of course! Did you think she was going to foal?”

Lasse laughed, as in duty bound, and followed the pupil back through
the stable. Now it would come, thought Pelle, and sat listening
intently; but he only heard his father make another excuse, close the
half-door, and come back with slow, tottering steps. Then he burst into
tears, and crept far in under the quilt.

Lasse went about for some time, grumbling to himself, and at last came
and gently drew the quilt down from the boy’s head. But Pelle buried
his face in the clothes, and when his father turned it up toward him,
he met a despairing, uncomprehending gaze that made his own wander
restlessly round the room.

“Yes,” he said, with an attempt at being cross. “It’s all very well for
you to cry! But when you don’t know where Aspasia stands, you’ve got to
be civil, I’m thinking.”

“I know Aspasia quite well,” sobbed the boy. “She’s the third from the
door here.”

Lasse was going to give a cross answer, but broke down, touched and
disarmed by the boy’s grief. He surrendered unconditionally, stooped
down until his forehead touched the boy’s, and said helplessly, “Yes,
Lasse’s a poor thing—old and poor! Any one can make a fool of him. He
can’t be angry any more, and there’s no strength in his fist, so what’s
the good of clenching it! He has to put up with everything, and let
himself be hustled about—and say thank you into the bargain—that’s how
it is with old Lasse. But you must remember that it’s for your sake he
lets himself be put upon. If it wasn’t for you, he’d shoulder his pack
and go—old though he is. But you can grow on where your father rusts.
And now you must leave off crying!” And he dried the boy’s wet eyes
with the quilt.

Pelle did not understand his father’s words, but they quieted him
nevertheless, and he soon fell asleep; but for a long time he sobbed as
he lay.

Lasse sat still upon the edge of the bed and watched the boy as he
slept, and when he had become quieter, crept away through the stable
and out. It had been a poor Sunday, and now he would go and see if any
of the men were at home and had visitors, for then there would be
spirits going round. Lasse could not find it in his heart to take any
of his wages to buy a dram with; that money would have quite enough to
do to buy bare necessaries.

On one of the beds lay a man asleep, fully dressed, and with his boots
on. He was dead drunk. All the others were out, so Lasse had to give up
all thoughts of a dram, and went across to the basement to see if there
was any gaiety going among the maids. He was not at all averse to
enjoyment of one sort or another, now that he was free and his own
master as he had been in the days of his youth.

Up by the dairy stood the three farm-laborers’ wives who used to do the
milking for the girls on Sunday evening. They were thick-set, small,
and bent with toil. They were all talking together and spoke of
illnesses and other sad things in plaintive tones. Lasse at once felt a
desire to join them, for the subject found an echo in his being like
the tones of a well-known song, and he could join in the refrain with
the experience of a lifetime. But he resisted the temptation, and went
past them down the basement steps. “Ah, yes, death will come to us
all!” said one of the women, and Lasse said the words after her to
himself as he went down.

Down there Karna was sitting mending Gustav’s moleskin trousers, while
Gustav lay upon the bench asleep with his cap over his face. He had put
his feet up on Karna’s lap, without so much as taking off his shoes;
and she had accommodated her lap, so that they should not slide off.

Lasse sat down beside her and tried to make himself agreeable. He
wanted some one to be nice to him. But Karna was unapproachable; those
dirty feet had quite turned her head. And either Lasse had forgotten
how to do it, or he was wanting in assurance, for every time he
attempted a pleasant speech, she turned it off.

“We might have such a comfortable time, we two elderly folk,” he said
hopelessly.

“Yes, and I could contribute what was wanting,” said Gustav, peeping
out from under his cap. Insolent puppy, lying there and boasting of his
seventeen years! Lasse had a good mind to go for him then and there and
chance yet one more trial of strength. But he contented himself with
sitting and looking at him until his red, lashless eyes grew watery.
Then he got up.

“Well, well, I see you want young people this evening!” he said
bitterly to Karna. “But you can’t get rid of your years, all the same!
Perhaps you’ll only get the spoon to lick after the others.”

He went across to the cow-stable and began to talk to the three
farm-laborers’ wives, who were still speaking of illness and misery and
death, as if nothing else existed in the world. Lasse nodded and said:
“Yes, yes, that’s true.” He could heartily endorse it all, and could
add much to what they said. It brought warmth to his old body, and made
him feel quite comfortable—so easy in his joints.

But when he lay on his back in bed, all the sad thoughts came back and
he could not sleep. Generally he slept like a log as soon as he lay
down, but to-day was Sunday, and he was tormented with the thought that
life had passed him by. He had promised himself so much from the
island, and it was nothing but worry and toil and trouble —nothing else
at all.

“Yes, Lasse’s old!” he suddenly said aloud, and he kept on repeating
the words with a little variation until he fell asleep: “He’s old, poor
man—and played out! Ah, so old!” Those words expressed it all.

He was awakened again by singing and shouting up on the high-road.

“And now the boy you gave me
With the black and curly hair,
He is no longer little,
No longer, no longer,
But a fine, tall strapping youth.”


It was some of the men and girls of the farm on their way home from
some entertainment. When they turned into the farm road they became
silent. It was just beginning to grow light; it must have been about
two o’clock.




IV


At four, Lasse and Pelle were dressed and were opening the cow-stable
doors on the field side. The earth was rolling off its white covering
of night mist, and the morning rose prophetically. Lasse stood still in
the doorway, yawning, and making up his mind about the weather for the
day; but Pelle let the soft tones of the wind and the song of the
lark—all that was stirring—beat upon his little heart. With open mouth
and doubtful eyes he gazed into the incomprehensible as represented by
each new day with all its unimagined possibilities. “To-day you must
take your coat with you, for we shall have rain about midday,” Lasse
would then say; and Pelle peered into the sky to find out where his
father got his knowledge from. For it generally came true.

They then set about cleaning out the dung in the cow-stable, Pelle
scraping the floor under the cows and sweeping it up, Lasse filling the
wheelbarrow and wheeling it out. At half-past five they ate their
morning meal of salt herring and porridge.

After that Pelle set out with the young cattle, his dinner basket on
his arm, and his whip wound several times round his neck. His father
had made him a short, thick stick with rings on it, that he could
rattle admonishingly and throw at the animals; but Pelle preferred the
whip, because he was not yet strong enough to use it.

He was little, and at first he had some difficulty in making an
impression upon the great forces over which he was placed. He could not
get his voice to sound sufficiently terrifying, and on the way out from
the farm he had hard work, especially up near the farm, where the corn
stood high on both sides of the field-road. The animals were hungry in
the morning, and the big bullocks did not trouble to move when once
they had their noses buried in the corn and he stood belaboring them
with the short handle of the cattle- whip. The twelve-foot lash, which,
in a practised hand, left little triangular marks in the animal’s hide,
he could not manage at all; and if he kicked the bullock on the head
with his wooden shoe, it only closed its eyes good-naturedly, and
browsed on sedately with its back to him. Then he would break into a
despairing roar, or into little fits of rage in which he attacked the
animal blindly and tried to get at its eyes; but it was all equally
useless. He could always make the calves move by twisting their tails,
but the bullocks’ tails were too strong.

He did not cry, however, for long at a time over the failure of his
resources. One evening he got his father to put a spike into the toe of
one of his wooden shoes, and after that his kick was respected. Partly
by himself, and partly through Rud, he also learned where to find the
places on the animals where it hurt most. The cow-calves and the two
bull-calves all had their particular tender spot, and a well-directed
blow upon a horn could make even the large bullocks bellow with pain.

The driving out was hard work, but the herding itself was easy. When
once the cattle were quietly grazing, he felt like a general, and made
his voice sound out incessantly over the meadow, while his little body
swelled with pride and a sense of power.

Being away from his father was a trouble to him. He did not go home to
dinner, and often in the middle of his play, despair would come over
him and he would imagine that something had happened to his father,
that the great bull had tossed him or something else; and he would
leave everything, and start running homeward crying, but would remember
in time the bailiff’s whip, and trudge back again. He found a remedy
for his longing by stationing himself so that he could keep a lookout
on the fields up there, and see his father when he went out to move the
dairy-cows.

He taught himself to whittle boats and little rakes and hoes and
decorate sticks with patterns cut upon the bark. He was clever with his
knife and made diligent use of it. He would also stand for hours on the
top of a monolith—he thought it was a gate-post—and try to crack his
cattle-whip like a pistol-shot. He had to climb to a height to get the
lash off the ground at all.

When the animals lay down in the middle of the morning, he was often
tired too, and then he would seat himself upon the head of one of the
big bullocks, and hold on to the points of its horns; and while the
animal lay chewing with a gentle vibration like a machine, he sat upon
its head and shouted at the top of his voice songs about blighted
affections and horrible massacres.

Toward midday Rud came running up, as hungry as a hunter. His mother
sent him out of the house when the hour for a meal drew near. Pelle
shared the contents of his basket with him, but required him to bring
the animals together a certain number of times for every portion of
food. The two boys could not exist apart for a whole day together. They
tumbled about in the field like two puppies, fought and made it up
again twenty times a day, swore the most fearful threats of vengeance
that should come in the shape of this or that grown-up person, and the
next moment had their arms round one another’s necks.

About half-a-mile of sand-dunes separated the Stone Farm fields from
the sea. Within this belt of sand the land was stony and afforded poor
grazing; but on both sides of the brook a strip of green meadow-land
ran down among the dunes, which were covered with dwarf firs and
grass-wrack to bind the sand. The best grazing was on this meadow-land,
but it was hard work minding both sides of it, as the brook ran
between; and it had been impressed upon the boy with severe threats,
that no animal must set its foot upon the dune-land, as the smallest
opening might cause a sand-drift. Pelle took the matter quite
literally, and all that summer imagined something like an explosion
that would make everything fly into the air the instant an animal trod
upon it; and this possibility hung like a fate at the back of
everything when he herded down there. When Rud came and they wanted to
play, he drove the cattle up on to the poor pasture where there was
plenty of room for them.

When the sun shone the boys ran about naked. They dared not venture
down to the sea for fear of the bailiff, who, they were sure, always
stood up in the attic of the big house, and watched Pelle through his
telescope; but they bathed in the brook—in and out of the water
continually for hours together.

After heavy rain it became swollen, and was then quite milky from the
china clay that it washed away from the banks farther up. The boys
thought it was milk from an enormous farm far up in the island. At high
water the sea ran up and filled the brook with decaying seaweed that
colored the water crimson; and this was the blood of all the people
drowned out in the sea.

Between their bathes they lay under the dunes and let the sun dry them.
They made a minute examination of their bodies, and discussed the use
and intention of the various parts. Upon this head Rud’s knowledge was
superior, and he took the part of instructor. They often quarrelled as
to which of them was the best equipped in one way or another—in other
words, had the largest. Pelle, for instance, envied Rud his
disproportionately large head.

Pelle was a well-built little fellow, and had put on flesh since he had
come to Stone Farm. His glossy skin was stretched smoothly over his
body, and was of a warm, sunburnt color. Rud had a thin neck in
proportion to his head, and his forehead was angular and covered with
scars, the results of innumerable falls. He had not full command of all
his limbs, and was always knocking and bruising himself; there were
blue, livid patches all over him that were slow to disappear, for he
had flesh that did not heal easily. But he was not so open in his envy
as Pelle. He asserted himself by boasting of his defects until he made
them out to be sheer achievements; so that Pelle ended by envying him
everything from the bottom of his heart.

Rud had not Pelle’s quick perception of things, but he had more
instinct, and on certain points possessed quite a talent in
anticipating what Pelle only learned by experience. He was already
avaricious to a certain extent, and suspicious without connecting any
definite thoughts with it. He ate the lion’s share of the food, and had
a variety of ways of getting out of doing the work.

Behind their play there lay, clothed in the most childish forms, a
struggle for the supremacy, and for the present Pelle was the one who
came off second best. In an emergency, Rud always knew how to appeal to
his good qualities and turn them to his own advantage.

And through all this they were the best friends in the world, and were
quite inseparable. Pelle was always looking toward “the Sow’s” cottage
when he was alone, and Rud ran off from home as soon as he saw his
opportunity.

It had rained hard in the course of the morning, in spite of Lasse, and
Pelle was wet through. Now the blue-black cloud was drawing away over
the sea, and the boats lay in the middle of it with all their red sails
set, and yet motionless. The sunlight flashed and glittered on wet
surfaces, making everything look bright; and Pelle hung his clothes on
a dwarf fir to dry.

He was cold, and crept close up to Peter, the biggest of the bullocks,
as he lay chewing the cud. The animal was steaming, but Pelle could not
bring warmth into his extremities, where the cold had taken hold. His
teeth chattered, too, and he was shivering.

And even now there was one of the cows that would not let him have any
peace. Every time he had snuggled right in under the bullock and was
beginning to get a little warmer, the cow strayed away over the
northern boundary. There was nothing but sand there, but when it was a
calf there had been a patch of mixed crops, and it still remembered
that.

It was one of two cows that had been turned out of the dairy-herd on
account of their dryness. They were ill-tempered creatures, always
discontented and doing some mischief or other; and Pelle detested them
heartily. They were two regular termagants, upon which even thrashing
made no impression. The one was a savage beast, that would suddenly
begin stamping and bellowing like a mad bull in the middle of grazing,
and, if Pelle went toward it, wanted to toss him; and when it saw its
opportunity, it would eat up the cloth in which Pelle’s dinner was
wrapped. The other was old and had crumpled horns that pointed in
toward its eyes, one of which had a white pupil.

It was the noisy one that was now at its tricks. Every other minute
Pelle had to get up and shout: “Hi, Blakka, you villainous beast! Just
you come back!” He was hoarse with anger, and at last his patience gave
way, and he caught up a big stick and began to chase the cow. As soon
as it saw his intention, it set off at a run up toward the farm, and
Pelle had to make a wide circle to turn it down to the herd again. Then
it ran at full gallop in and out among the other animals, the herd
became confused and ran hither and thither, and Pelle had to relinquish
his pursuit for a time while he gathered them together. But then he
began again at once. He was boiling with rage, and leaped about like an
indiarubber ball, his naked body flashing in loops and curves upon the
green grass. He was only a few yards from the cow, but the distance
remained the same; he could not catch her up to-day.

He stopped up by the rye-field, and the cow stood still almost at the
same moment. It snapped at a few ears, and moved its head slowly to
choose its direction. In a couple of leaps Pelle was up to it and had
hold of its tail. He hit it over the nose with his cudgel, it turned
quickly away from the rye, and set off at a flying pace down toward the
others, while blows rained down upon its bony prominences. Every stroke
echoed back from the dunes like blows upon the trunk of a tree, and
made Pelle swell with pride. The cow tried to shake Pelle off as it
ran, but he was not to be got rid of; it crossed the brook in long
bounds, backward and forward, with Pelle almost floating through the
air; but the blows continued to rain down upon it. Then it grew tired
and began to slacken its pace; and at last it came to a standstill,
coughed, and resigned itself to the thrashing.

Pelle threw himself flat upon his face, and panted. Ha, ha! _That_ had
made him warm! Now that beast should—He rolled suddenly over on to his
side with a start. The bailiff! But it was a strange man with a beard
who stood over him, looking at him with serious eyes. The stranger went
on gazing at him for a long time without saying anything, and Pelle
grew more and more uneasy under his scrutiny; he had the sun right in
his eyes too, if he tried to return the man’s gaze, and the cow still
stood there coughing.

“What do you think the bailiff will say?” asked the man at last,
quietly.

“I don’t think he’s seen it,” whispered Pelle, looking timidly round.

“But God has seen it, for He sees everything. And He has led me here to
stop the evil in you while there’s still time. Wouldn’t you like to be
God’s child?” The man sat down beside him and took his hand.

Pelle sat tugging at the grass and wishing he had had his clothes on.

“And you must never forget that God sees everything you do; even in the
darkest night He sees. We are always walking in God’s sight. But come
now, it’s unseemly to run about naked!” And the man took him by the
hand and led him to his clothes, and then, going across to the north
side, he gathered the herd together while Pelle dressed himself. The
wicked cow was over there again already, and had drawn a few of the
others after it. Pelle watched the man in surprise; he drove the
animals back quite quietly, neither using stones nor shouting. Before
he got back, Blakka had once more crossed the boundary; but he turned
and brought her back again just as gently as before.

“That’s not an easy cow to manage,” he said kindly, when he returned;
“but you’ve got young legs. Shan’t we agree to burn that?” he asked,
picking up the thick cudgel, “and do what we have to do with just our
hands? God will always help you when you’re in difficulties. And if you
want to be a true child of God, you must tell the bailiff this evening
what you did—and take your punishment.” He placed his hand upon Pelle’s
head, and looked at him with that unendurable gaze; and then he left
him, taking the stick with him.

For a long time Pelle followed him with his eyes. So that was what a
man looked like, who was sent by God to warn you! Now he knew, and it
would be some time before he chased a cow like that again. But go to
the bailiff, and tell of himself, and get the whip-lash on his bare
legs? Not if he knew it! Rather than that, God would have to be
angry—if it was really true that He could see everything? It couldn’t
be worse than the bailiff, anyhow.

All that morning he was very quiet. He felt the man’s eyes upon him in
everything he did, and it robbed him of his confidence. He silently
tested things, and saw everything in a new light; it was best not to
make a noise, if you were always walking in the sight of God. He did
not go on cracking his cattle-whip, but meditated a little on whether
he should burn that too.

But a little before midday Rud appeared, and the whole incident was
forgotten. Rud was smoking a bit of cane that he had cut off the piece
his mother used for cleaning the stove-pipes, and Pelle bartered some
of his dinner for a few pulls at it. First they seated themselves
astride the bullock Cupid, which was lying chewing the cud. It went on
calmly chewing with closed eyes, until Rud put the glowing cane to the
root of its tail, when it rose hastily, both boys rolling over its
head. They laughed and boasted to one another of the somersault they
had turned, as they went up on to the high ground to look for
blackberries. Thence they went to some birds’ nests in the small firs,
and last of all they set about their best game—digging up mice-nests.

Pelle knew every mouse-hole in the meadow, and they lay down and
examined them carefully. “Here’s one that has mice in it,” said Rud.
“Look, here’s their dunghill!”

“Yes, that smells of mouse,” said Pelle, putting his nose to the hole.
“And the blades of grass turn outward, so the old ones must be out.”

With Pelle’s knife they cut away the turf, and set to work eagerly to
dig with two pieces of pot. The soil flew about their heads as they
talked and laughed.

“My word, how fast we’re getting on!”

“Yes; Ström couldn’t work as fast!” Ström was a famous worker who got
twenty-five öres a day more than other autumn farm-hands, and his
example was used as an incentive to coax work out of the laborers.

“We shall soon get right into the inside of the earth.”

“Well, but it’s burning hot in there.”

“Oh, nonsense: is it?” Pelle paused doubtfully in his digging.

“Yes, the schoolmaster says so.”

The boys hesitated and put their hands down into the hole. Yes, it was
warm at the bottom—so warm that Pelle found it necessary to pull out
his hand and say: “Oh, my word!” They considered a little, and then
went on scraping out the hole as carefully as if their lives depended
on it. In a little while straw appeared in the passage, and in a moment
the internal heat of the earth was forgotten. In less than a minute
they had uncovered the nest, and laid the little pink, new-born mice
out on the grass. They looked like half-hatched birds.

“They _are_ ugly,” said Pelle, who did not quite like taking hold of
them, but was ashamed not to do so. “They’re much nastier to touch than
toads. I believe they’re poisonous.”

Rud lay pinching them between his fingers.

“Poisonous! Don’t be silly! Why, they haven’t any teeth! There are no
bones in them at all; I’m sure you could eat them quite well.”

“Pah! Beastly!” Pelle spat on the ground.

“I shouldn’t be at all afraid of biting one; would you?” Rud lifted a
little mouse up toward his mouth.

“Afraid? Of course I’m not afraid—but—” Pelle hesitated.

“No, you’re afraid, because you’re a blue-bag!”

Now this nickname really only applied to boys who were afraid of water,
but Pelle quickly seized one of the little mice, and held it up to his
mouth, at exactly the same distance from his lips that Rud was from
his. “You can see for yourself!” he cried, in an offended tone.

Rud went on talking, with many gestures.

“You’re afraid,” he said, “and it’s because you’re Swedish. But when
you’re afraid, you should just shut your eyes—so—and open your mouth.
Then you pretend to put the mouse right into your mouth, and then—” Rud
had his mouth wide open, and held his hand close to his mouth; Pelle
was under his influence, and imitated his movements—“and then—” Pelle
received a blow that sent the little mouse halfway down his throat. He
retched and spat; and then his hands fumbled in the grass and got hold
of a stone. But by the time he was on his feet and was going to throw
it, Rud was far away up the fields. “I must go home now!” he shouted
innocently. “There’s something I’ve got to help mother with.”

Pelle did not love solitude, and the prospect of a blockade determined
him at once for negotiations. He dropped the stone to show his serious
wish for a reconciliation, and had to swear solemnly that he would not
bear malice. Then at last Rud came back, tittering.

“I was going to show you something funny with the mouse,” he said by
way of diversion; “but you held on to it like an idiot.” He did not
venture to come quite close up to Pelle, but stood watching his
movements.

Pelle was acquainted with the little white lie when the danger of a
thrashing was imminent, but the lie as an attack was still unknown to
him. If Rud, now that the whole thing was over, said that he only
wanted to have shown him something funny, it must be true. But then why
was he mistrustful? Pelle tried, as he had so often done before, to
bend his little brain round the possible tricks of his playmate, but
failed.

“You may just as well come up close,” he said stoutly. “For if I wanted
to, I could easily catch you up.”

Rud came. “Now we’ll catch big mice.” he said. “That’s better fun.”

They emptied Pelle’s milk-bottle, and hunted up a mouse’s nest that
appeared to have only two exits, one up in the meadow, the other
halfway down the bank of the stream. Here they pushed in the mouth of
the bottle, and widened the hole in the meadow into a funnel; and they
took it in turns to keep an eye on the bottle, and to carry water up to
the other hole in their caps. It was not long before a mouse popped out
into the bottle, which they then corked.

What should they do with it? Pelle proposed that they should tame it
and train it to draw their little agricultural implements; but Rud, as
usual, got his way—it was to go out sailing.

Where the stream turned, and had hollowed out its bed into a hole as
big as a cauldron, they made an inclined plane and let the bottle slide
down into the water head foremost, like a ship being launched. They
could follow it as it curved under the water until it came up
slantingly, and stood bobbing up and down on the water like a buoy,
with its neck up. The mouse made the funniest leaps up toward the cork
to get out; and the boys jumped up and down on the grass with delight.

“It knows the way it got in quite well!” They imitated its unsuccessful
leaps, lay down again and rolled about in exuberant mirth. At last,
however, the joke became stale.

“Let’s take out the cork!” suggested Rud.

“Yes—oh, yes!” Pelle waded quickly in, and was going to set the mouse
at liberty.

“Wait a minute, you donkey!” Rud snatched the bottle from him, and
holding his hand over the mouth, put it back, into the water. “Now
we’ll see some fun!” he cried, hastening up the bank.

It was a little while before the mouse discovered that the way was
open, but then it leaped. The leap was unsuccessful, and made the
bottle rock, so that the second leap was slanting and rebounded
sideways. But then followed with lightning rapidity a number of leaps—a
perfect bombardment; and suddenly the mouse flew right out of the
bottle, head foremost into the water.

“That was a leap and a half!” cried Pelle, jumping straight up and down
in the grass, with his arms at his sides. “It could just squeeze its
body through, just exactly!” And he jumped again, squeezing himself
together.

The mouse swam to land, but Rud was there, and pushed it out again with
his foot. “It swam well,” he said, laughing. It made for the opposite
bank. “Look out for the fellow!” Rud roared, and Pelle sprang forward
and turned it away from the shore with a good kick. It swam helplessly
backward and forward in the middle of the pool, seeing one of the two
dancing figures every time it approached a bank, and turning and
turning endlessly. It sank deeper and deeper, its fur becoming wet and
dragging it down, until at last it swam right under water. Suddenly it
stretched out its body convulsively, and sank to the bottom, with all
four legs outspread like a wide embrace.

Pelle had all at once comprehended the perplexity and helplessness
—perhaps was familiar with it. At the animal’s final struggle, he burst
into tears with a little scream, and ran, crying loudly, up the meadow
toward the fir-plantation. In a little while he came back again. “I
really thought Cupid had run away,” he said repeatedly, and carefully
avoided looking Rud in the face. Quietly he waded into the water, and
fished up the dead mouse with his foot.

They laid it upon a stone in the sun, so that it might come to life
again. When that failed, Pelle remembered a story about some people who
were drowned in a lake at home, and who came to themselves again when
cannons were fired over them. They clapped their hollowed hands over
the mouse, and when that too brought about no result, they decided to
bury it.

Rud happened to remember that his grandmother in Sweden was being
buried just now, and this made them go about the matter with a certain
amount of solemnity. They made a coffin out of a matchbox, and
ornamented it with moss; and then they lay on their faces and lowered
the coffin into the grave with twine, taking every possible care that
it should not land upon its head. A rope might give way; such things
did sometimes happen, and the illusion did not permit of their
correcting the position of the coffin afterward with their hands. When
this was done, Pelle looked down into his cap, while Rud prayed over
the deceased and cast earth upon the coffin; and then they made up the
grave.

“I only hope it’s not in a trance and going to wake up again!”
exclaimed Pelle suddenly. They had both heard many unpleasant stories
of such cases, and went over all the possibilities—how they woke up and
couldn’t get any air, and knocked upon the lid, and began to eat their
own hands—until Pelle could distinctly hear a knocking on the lid
below. They had the coffin up in a trice, and examined the mouse. It
had not eaten its forepaws, at any rate, but it had most decidedly
turned over on its side. They buried it again, putting a dead beetle
beside it in the coffin for safety’s sake, and sticking a straw down
into the grave to supply it with air. Then they ornamented the mound,
and set up a memorial stone.

“It’s dead now!” said Pelle, gravely and with conviction.

“Yes, I should just think so—dead as a herring.” Rud had put his ear to
the straw and listened.

“And now it must be up with God in all His glory—right high, high up.”

Rud sniffed contemptuously. “Oh, you silly! Do you think it can crawl
up there?”

“Well, can’t mice crawl, I should like to know?” Pelle was cross.

“Yes; but not through the air. Only birds can do that.”

Pelle felt himself beaten off the field and wanted to be revenged.

“Then your grandmother isn’t in heaven, either!” he declared
emphatically. There was still a little rancor in his heart from the
young mouse episode.

But this was more than Rud could stand. It had touched his family
pride, and he gave Pelle a dig in the side with his elbow. The next
moment they were rolling in the grass, holding one another by the hair,
and making awkward attempts to hit one another on the nose with their
clenched fists. They turned over and over like one lump, now one
uppermost, now the other; they hissed hoarsely, groaned and made
tremendous exertions. “I’ll make you sneeze red,” said Pelle angrily,
as he rose above his adversary; but the next moment he was down again,
with Rud hanging over him and uttering the most fearful threats about
black eyes and seeing stars. Their voices were thick with passion.

And suddenly they were sitting opposite one another on the grass
wondering whether they should set up a howl. Rud put out his tongue,
Pelle went a step further and began to laugh, and they were once more
the best of friends. They set up the memorial stone, which had been
overturned in the heat of battle, and then sat down hand in hand, to
rest after the storm, a little quieter than usual.

It was not because there was more evil in Pelle, but because the
question had acquired for him an importance of its own, and he must
understand it, that a meditative expression came into his eyes, and he
said thoughtfully:

“Well, but you’ve told me yourself that she was paralyzed in her legs!”

“Well, what if she was?”

“Why, then she couldn’t crawl up into heaven.”

“Oh, you booby! It’s her spirit, of course!”

“Then the mouse’s spirit can very well be up there too.”

“No, it can’t, for mice haven’t got any spirit.”

“Haven’t they? Then how is it they can breathe?”[1]

 [1] In Danish, spirit = aand, and to breathe = aande.


That was one for Rud! And the tiresome part of it was that he attended
Sunday-school. His fists would have come in handy again now, but his
instinct told him that sooner or later Pelle would get the better of
him in fighting. And anyhow his grandmother was saved.

“Yes,” he said, yielding; “and it certainly could breathe. Well, then,
it was its spirit flying up that overturned the stone—that’s what it
was!”

A distant sound reached them, and far off near the cottage they could
see the figure of a fat woman, beckoning threateningly.

“The Sow’s calling you,” said Pelle. The two boys never called her
anything but “the Sow” between themselves.

So Rud had to go. He was allowed to take the greater part of the
contents of the dinner-basket with him, and ate as he ran. They had
been too busy to eat.

Pelle sat down among the dunes and ate his dinner. As usual when Rud
had been with him, he could not imagine what had become of the day. The
birds had ceased singing, and not one of the cattle was still lying
down, so it must be at least five o’clock.

Up at the farm they were busy driving in. It went at full gallop— out
and in, out and in. The men stood up in the carts and thrashed away at
the horses with the end of the reins, and the swaying loads were
hurried along the field-roads, looking like little bristling, crawling
things, that have been startled and are darting to their holes.

A one-horsed vehicle drove out from the farm, and took the high-road to
the town at a quick trot. It was the farmer; he was driving so fast
that he was evidently off to the town on the spree. So there was
something gone wrong at home, and there would be crying at the farm
that night.

Yes, there was Father Lasse driving out with the water-cart, so it was
half-past five. He could tell that too by the birds beginning their
pleasant evening twittering, that was soft and sparkling like the rays
of the sun.

Far inland above the stone-quarry, where the cranes stood out against
the sky, a cloud of smoke rose every now and then into the air, and
burst in a fountain of pieces of rock. Long after came the explosion,
bit by bit in a series of rattling reverberations. It sounded as if
some one were running along and slapping his thigh with fingerless
gloves.

The last few hours were always long—the sun was so slow about it. And
there was nothing to fill up the time either. Pelle himself was tired,
and the tranquillity of evening had the effect of subduing his voice.
But now they were driving out for milking up there, and the cattle were
beginning to graze along the edge of the meadow that turned toward the
farm; so the time was drawing near.

At last the herd-boys began to jodel over at the neighboring farms,
first one, and then several joining in:

“Oh, drive home, o-ho, o-o-ho!
    O-ho, o-ho!
    O-ho, o-ho!
Oh, drive home, o-o-ho!
    O-ho!”


From all sides the soft tones vibrated over the sloping land, running
out, like the sound of happy weeping, into the first glow of evening;
and Pelle’s animals began to move farther after each pause to graze.
But he did not dare to drive them home yet, for it only meant a
thrashing from the bailiff or the pupil if he arrived too early.

He stood at the upper end of the meadow, and called his homeward-
drifting flock together; and when the last tones of the call had died
away, he began it himself, and stepped on one side. The animals ran
with a peculiar little trot and heads extended. The shadow of the grass
lay in long thin stripes across the ground, and the shadows of the
animals were endless. Now and then a calf lowed slowly and broke into a
gallop. They were yearning for home, and Pelle was yearning too.

From behind a hollow the sun darted long rays out into space, as if it
had called all its powers home for the night, and now poured them forth
in one great longing, from west to east. Everything pointed in long
thin lines, and the eager longing of the cattle seemed visible in the
air.

To the mind of the child there was nothing left out of doors now;
everything was being taken in, and he longed for his father with a
longing that was almost a pain. And when at last he turned the corner
with the herd, and saw old Lasse standing there, smiling happily with
his red-rimmed eyes, and opening the gate to the fold, the boy gave way
and threw himself weeping into his father’s arms.

“What’s the matter, laddie? What’s the matter?” asked the old man, with
concern in his voice, stroking the child’s face with a trembling hand.
“Has any one been unkind to you? No? Well, that’s a good thing! They’d
better take care, for happy children are in God’s own keeping. And
Lasse would be an awkward customer if it came to that. So you were
longing for me, were you? Then it’s good to be in your little heart,
and it only makes Lasse happy. But go in now and get your supper, and
don’t cry any more.” And he wiped the boy’s nose with his hard, crooked
fingers, and pushed him gently away.




V


Pelle was not long in finding out all about the man who had been sent
by God, and had the grave, reproachful eyes. He proved to be nothing
but a little shoemaker down in the village, who spoke at the
meeting-house on Sundays; and it was also said that his wife drank. Rud
went to his Sunday-school, and he was poor; so he was nothing out of
the ordinary.

Moreover, Gustav had got a cap which could turn out three different
crowns—one of blue duffle, one of water-proof American cloth, and one
of white canvas for use in sunny weather. It was an absorbingly
interesting study that threw everything else into the background, and
exercised Pelle’s mind for many days; and he used this miraculous cap
as a standard by which to measure everything great and desirable. But
one day he gave Gustav a beautifully carved stick for permission to
perform the trick of turning the crown inside out himself; and that set
his mind at rest at last, and the cap had to take its place in his
everyday world like everything else.

But what did it look like in Farmer Kongstrup’s big rooms? Money lay
upon the floor there, of course, the gold in one place and the silver
in another; and in the middle of each heap stood a half-bushel measure.
What did the word _“practical”_ mean, which the bailiff used when he
talked to the farmer? And why did the men call one another _“Swede”_ as
a term of abuse? Why, they were all Swedes! What was there away beyond
the cliffs where the stone-quarry lay? The farm-lands extended as far
as that on the one side. He had not been there yet, but was going with
his father as soon as an opportunity presented itself. They had learnt
quite by chance that Lasse had a brother who owned a house over there;
so of course they knew the place comparatively well.

Down there lay the sea; he had sailed upon it himself! Ships both of
iron and wood sailed upon it, though how iron could float when it was
so heavy he did not know! The sea must be strong, for in the pond, iron
went to the bottom at once. In the middle of the pond there was no
bottom, so there you’d go on sinking forever! The old thatcher, when he
was young, had had more than a hundred fathoms of rope down there with
a drag, to fish up a bucket, but he never reached the bottom. And when
he wanted to pull up the rope again, there was some one deep down who
caught hold of the drag and tried to pull him down, so he had to let
the whole thing go.

God … well, He had a long white beard like the farmer at Kaase Farm;
but who kept house for Him now He was old? Saint Peter was His bailiff,
of course!… How could the old, dry cows have just as young calves as
the young ones? And so on, and so on.

There was one subject about which, as a matter of course, there could
be no question, nor any thought at all in that sense, because it was
the very foundation of all existence—Father Lasse. He was there,
simply, he stood like a safe wall behind everything that one did. He
was the real Providence, the last great refuge in good and ill; he
could do whatever he liked—Father Lasse was almighty.

Then there was one natural centre in the world—Pelle himself.
Everything grouped itself about him, everything existed for him—for him
to play with, to shudder at, or to put on one side for a great future.
Even distant trees, houses and rocks in the landscape, that he had
never been up to, assumed an attitude toward him, either friendly or
hostile; and the relation had to be carefully decided in the case of
each new thing that appeared upon his horizon.

His world was small; he had only just begun to create it. For a good
arm’s-length on all sides of him, there was more or less _terra firma_;
but beyond that floated raw matter, chaos. But Pelle already found his
world immense, and was quite willing to make it infinite. He attacked
everything with insatiable appetite; his ready perceptions laid hold of
all that came within their reach; they were like the mouth of a
machine, into which matter was incessantly rushing in small, whirling
particles. And in the draught they raised, came others and again
others; the entire universe was on its way toward him.

Pelle shaped and set aside twenty new things in the course of a second.
The earth grew out under him into a world that was rich in excitement
and grotesque forms, discomfort and the most everyday things. He went
about in it uncertainly, for there was always something that became
displaced and had to be revalued or made over again; the most
matter-of-fact things would change and all at once become terrifying
marvels, or _vice versa_. He went about in a state of continual
wonderment, and assumed an expectant attitude even with regard to the
most familiar things; for who could tell what surprises they might give
one?

As an instance; he had all his life had opportunities of verifying the
fact that trouser-buttons were made of bone and had five holes, one
large one in the middle and four smaller ones round it. And then one
day, one of the men comes home from the town with a pair of new
trousers, the buttons of which are made of bright metal and are no
larger than a sixpenny-piece! They have only four holes, and the thread
is to lie across them, not from the middle outward, as in the old ones.

Or take the great eclipse of the sun, that he had wondered so much
about all the summer, and that all the old people said would bring
about the destruction of the world. He had looked forward to it,
especially the destruction part of it; it would be something of an
adventure, and somewhere within him there was a little bit of confident
assurance that it would all come right as far as he was concerned. The
eclipse did come too, as it was meant to; it grew dark too, as if it
were the Last Day, and the birds became so quiet, and the cattle
bellowed and wanted to run home. But then it grew light again and it
all came to nothing.

Then there were fearful terrors that all at once revealed themselves as
tiny, tiny things—thank goodness! But there were also anticipated
pleasures that made your heart beat, and when you got up to them they
were dullness itself.

Far out in the misty mass, invisible worlds floated by that had nothing
to do with his own. A sound coming out of the unknown created them in a
twinkling. They came into existence in the same way that the land had
done that morning he had stood upon the deck of the steamer, and heard
voices and noise through the fog, thick and big, with forms that looked
like huge gloves without fingers.

And inside one there was blood and a heart and a soul. The heart Pelle
had found out about himself; it was a little bird shut up in there. But
the soul bored its way like a serpent to whatever part of the body
desire occupied. Old thatcher Holm had once drawn the soul like a thin
thread out of the thumb of a man who couldn’t help stealing. Pelle’s
own soul was good; it lay in the pupils of his eyes, and reflected
Father Lasse’s image whenever he looked into them.

The blood was the worst, and so Father Lasse always let himself be bled
when there was anything the matter with him; the bad humors had to be
let out. Gustav thought a great deal about blood, and could tell the
strangest things about it; and he cut his fingers only to see whether
it was ripe. One evening he came over to the cow-stable and exhibited a
bleeding finger. The blood was quite black. “Now I’m a man!” he said,
and swore a great oath; but the maids only made fun of him, and said
that he had not carried his four bushels of peas up into the loft yet.

Then there was hell and heaven, and the stone-quarry where they struck
one another with heavy hammers when they were drunk. The men in the
stone-quarry were the strongest men in the world. One of them had eaten
ten poached eggs at one time without being ill; and there is nothing so
strengthening as eggs.

Down in the meadow, will-o’-the-wisps hopped about looking for
something in the deep summer nights. There was always one of them near
the stream, and it stood and danced on the top of a little heap of
stones that lay in the middle of the meadow. A couple of years ago a
girl had one night given birth to a child out there among the dunes and
as she did not know what to do about a father for it, she drowned it in
one of the pools that the brook makes where it turns. Good people
raised the little cairn, so that the place should not be forgotten; and
over it the child’s soul used to burn at dead of night at the time of
year at which it was born. Pelle believed that the child itself was
buried beneath the stones, and now and then ornamented the mound with a
branch of fir; but he never played at that part of the stream. The girl
was sent across the sea, sentenced to penal servitude for many years,
and people wondered at the father. She had not named any one, but every
one knew who it was all the same. He was a young, well-to-do fisherman
down in the village, and the girl was one of the poorest, so there
could never have been any question of their marrying. The girl must
have preferred this to begging help of him for the child, and living in
the village with an illegitimate child, an object of universal
derision. And he had certainly put a bold face on the matter, where
many another would have been ashamed and gone away on a long voyage.

This summer, two years after the girl went to prison, the fisherman was
going home one night along the shore toward the village with some nets
on his back. He was of a callous nature, and did not hesitate to take
the shortest way across the meadow; but when he got in among the dunes,
he saw a will-o’-the-wisp following in his steps, grew frightened, and
began to run. It began to gain upon him, and when he leaped across the
brook to put water between himself and the spirit, it seized hold of
the nets. At this he shouted the name of God, and fled like one bereft
of his senses. The next morning at sunrise he and his father went to
fetch the nets. They had caught on the cairn, and lay right across the
stream.

Then the young man joined the Revivalists, and his father abandoned his
riotous life and followed him. Early and late the young fisherman was
to be found at their meetings, and at other times he went about like a
malefactor with his head hanging down, only waiting for the girl to
come out of prison, so that he could marry her.

Pelle was up in it all. The girls talked shudderingly about it as they
sat upon the men’s knees in the long summer evenings, and a lovesick
fellow from inland had made up a ballad about it, which Gustav sang to
his concertina. Then all the girls on the farm wept, and even Lively
Sara’s eyes filled with tears, and she began to talk to Mons about
engagement rings.

One day when Pelle was lying on his face in the grass, singing and
clapping his naked feet together in the clear air, he saw a young man
standing by the cairn and putting on it stones which he took out of his
pocket; after which he knelt down. Pelle went up to him.

“What are you doing?” he asked boldly, feeling that he was in his own
domain. “Are you saying your prayers?”

The man did not answer, but remained in a kneeling posture. At last he
rose, and spat out tobacco-juice.

“I’m praying to Him Who is to judge us all,” he said, looking steadily
at Pelle.

Pelle recognized that look. It was the same in expression as that of
the man the other day—the one that had been sent by God. Only there was
no reproach in it.

“Haven’t you any bed to sleep in then?” asked Pelle. “I always say my
prayers under the clothes. He hears them just as well! God knows
everything.”

The young man nodded, and began moving about the stones on the cairn.

“You mustn’t hurt that,” said Pelle firmly, “for there’s a little baby
buried there.”

The young man turned upon him a strange look.

“That’s not true!” he said thickly; “for the child lies up in the
churchyard in consecrated earth.”

“O—oh, inde—ed?” said Pelle, imitating his father’s slow tones. “But I
know it was the parents that drowned it—and buried it here.” He was too
proud of his knowledge to relinquish it without a word.

The man looked as if he were about to strike him, and Pelle retreated a
little, and then, having confidence in his legs, he laughed openly. But
the other seemed no longer aware of his presence, and stood looking
dully past the cairn. Pelle drew nearer again.

The man started at Pelle’s shadow, and heaved a deep sigh. “Is that
you?” he said apathetically, without looking at Pelle. “Why can’t you
leave me alone?”

“It’s _my_ field,” said Pelle, “because I herd here; but you may stay
here if you won’t hit me. And you mustn’t touch the cairn, because
there’s a little baby buried there.”

The young man looked gravely at Pelle. “It’s not true what you say! How
dare you tell such a lie? God hates a lie. But you’re a simple-hearted
child, and I’ll tell you all about it without hiding anything, as truly
as I only want to walk wholly in God’s sight.”

Pelle looked at him uncomprehendingly. “I should think I ought to know
all about it,” he said, “considering I know the whole song by heart. I
can sing it to you, if you like. It goes like this.” Pelle began to
sing in a voice that was a little tremulous with shyness—

“So happy are we in our childhood’s first years,
    Neither sorrow nor sin is our mead;
We play, and there’s nought in our path to raise fears
    That it straight into prison doth lead.

Right many there are that with voice sorrowful
    Must oft for lost happiness long.
To make the time pass in this prison so dull,
    I now will write down all my song.

I played with my father, with mother I played,
    And childhood’s days came to an end;
And when I had grown up into a young maid,
    I played still, but now with my friend.

I gave him my day and I gave him my night,
    And never once thought of deceit;
But when I him told of my sorrowful plight,
    My trust I had cause to regret.

‘I never have loved you,’ he quickly did say;
    ‘Begone! I’ll ne’er see you again!’
He turned on his heel and went angry away.
    ’Twas then I a murd’ress became.”


Here Pelle paused in astonishment, for the grown-up man had sunk
forward as he sat, and he was sobbing. “Yes, it was wicked,” he said.
“For then she killed her child and had to go to prison.” He spoke with
a certain amount of contempt; he did not like men that cried. “But it’s
nothing that you need cry about,” he added carelessly, after a little.

“Yes, it is; for she’d done nothing. It was the child’s father that
killed it; it was me that did the dreadful thing; yes, I confess that
I’m a murderer! Haven’t I openly enough acknowledged by wrongdoing?” He
turned his face upward, as though he were speaking to God.

“Oh, was it you?” said Pelle, moving a little away from him. “Did you
kill your own child? Father Lasse could never have done that! But then
why aren’t you in prison? Did you tell a lie, and say _she’d_ done it?”

These words had a peculiar effect upon the fisherman. Pelle stood
watching him for a little, and then exclaimed: “You do talk so
queerly—‘blop-blop-blop,’ just as if you were from another country. And
what do you scrabble in the air with your fingers for, and cry? Will
you get a thrashing when you get home?”

At the word “cry,” the man burst into a flood of tears. Pelle had never
seen any one cry so unrestrainedly. His face seemed all blurred.

“Will you have a piece of my bread-and-butter?” he asked, by way of
offering comfort. “I’ve got some with sausage on.”

The fisherman shook his head.

Pelle looked at the cairn. He was obstinate, and determined not to give
in.

“It _is_ buried there,” he said. “I’ve seen its soul myself, burning up
on the top of the heap at night. That’s because it can’t get into
heaven.”

A horrible sound came from the fisherman’s lips, a hollow groan that
brought Pelle’s little heart into his mouth. He began to jump up and
down in fear, and when he recovered his senses and stopped, he saw the
fisherman running with head bent low across the meadow, until he
disappeared among the dunes.

Pelle gazed after him in astonishment, and then moved slowly toward his
dinner-basket. The result of the encounter was, as far as it had gone,
a disappointment. He had sung to a perfect stranger, and there was no
denying that that was an achievement, considering how difficult it
often was only to answer “yes” or “no” to somebody you’d never seen
before. But he had hardly more than begun the verses, and what made the
performance remarkable was that he knew the entire ballad by heart. He
sang it now for his own benefit from beginning to end, keeping count of
the verses on his fingers; and he found the most intense satisfaction
in shouting it out at the top of his voice.

In the evening he as usual discussed the events of the day with his
father, and he then understood one or two things that filled his mind
with uncomfortable thoughts. Father Lasse’s was as yet the only human
voice that the boy wholly understood; a mere sigh or shake of the head
from the old man had a more convincing power than words from any one
else.

“Alas!” he said again and again. “Evil, evil everywhere; sorrow and
trouble wherever you turn! He’d willingly give his life to go to prison
in her stead, now it’s too late! So he ran away when you said that to
him? Well, well, it’s not easy to resist the Word of God even from the
lips of a child, when the conscience is sore; and trading in the
happiness of others is a bad way of earning a living. But now see about
getting your feet washed, laddie.”

Life furnished enough to work at and struggle with, and a good deal to
dread; but worse almost than all that would harm Pelle himself, were
the glimpses he now and then had of the depths of humanity: in the face
of these his child’s brain was powerless. Why did the mistress cry so
much and drink secretly? What went on behind the windows in the big
house? He could not comprehend it, and every time he puzzled his little
brain over it, the uncomfortable feeling only seemed to stare out at
him from all the window-panes, and sometimes enveloped him in all the
horror of the incomprehensible.

But the sun rode high in the heavens, and the nights were light. The
darkness lay crouching under the earth and had no power. And he
possessed the child’s happy gift of forgetting instantly and
completely.




VI


Pelle had a quick pulse and much energy, and there was always something
that he was attempting to overtake in his restless onward rush—if
nothing else, then time itself. Now the rye was all in, now the last
stack disappeared from the field, the shadows grew longer every day.
But one evening the darkness surprised him before his bedtime, and this
made him serious. He no longer hastened on the time, but tried to hold
it back by many small sun-signs.

One day the men’s midday rest was taken off. They harnessed the horses
again as soon as they had eaten their dinner, and the chaff-cutting was
put off until the evening. The horse-way lay on the outer side of the
stable, and none of the men cared to tramp round out there in the dark,
driving for the chaff-cutter, so Pelle had to do it. Lasse protested
and threatened to go to the farmer, but it was of no use; every evening
Pelle had to be out there for a couple of hours. They were his nicest
hours that they took from him, the hours when he and Father Lasse
pottered about in the stable, and talked themselves happily through all
the day’s troubles into a common bright future; and Pelle cried. When
the moon chased the clouds away and he could see everything round him
distinctly, he allowed his tears to run freely; but on dark evenings he
was quiet and held his breath. Sometimes when it rained it was so dark
that the farm and everything disappeared; and then he saw hundreds of
beings that at other times the light hid. They appeared out of the
darkness, terribly big, or came sliding up to him upon their bellies.
He grew rigid as he gazed, and could not take his eyes from them. He
sought shelter under the wall, and encouraged the horse from there; and
one evening he ran in. They chased him out again, and he submitted to
be chased, for when it came to the point he was more afraid of the men
inside than of the beings outside. But one pitch-dark evening he was in
an unusually bad way, and when he discovered that the horse, his only
comfort, was also afraid, he dropped everything and ran in for the
second time. Threats were powerless to make him go out again, and blows
equally so, and one of the men took him up and carried him out; but
then Pelle forgot everything, and screamed till the house shook.

While they were struggling with him, the farmer came out. He was very
angry when he heard what was the matter, and blew the foreman up sky
high. Then he took Pelle by the hand, and went down with him to the
cow-stable. “A man like you to be afraid of a little dark!” he said
jokingly. “You must try to get the better of that. But if the men harm
you, just you come to me.”

The plough went up and down the fields all day long, and made the earth
dark in color, the foliage became variegated, and there was often
sleet. The coats of the cattle grew thicker, their hair grew long and
stood up on their backs. Pelle had much to put up with, and existence
as a whole became a shade more serious. His clothing did not become
thicker and warmer with the cold weather like that of the cattle; but
he could crack his whip so that it sounded, in the most successful
attempts, like little shots; he could thrash Rud when there was no
unfairness, and jump across the stream at its narrowest part. All that
brought warmth to the body.

The flock now grazed all over the farm-lands, wherever the cows had
been tethered; the dairy-cows being now indoors; or they went inland on
the fens, where all the farms had each a piece of grass-land. Here
Pelle made acquaintance with herd-boys from the other farms, and looked
into quite another world that was not ruled by bailiff and farm-pupil
and thrashings, but where all ate at the same table, and the mistress
herself sat and spun wool for the herd-boys’ stockings. But he could
never get in there, for they did not take Swedes at the small farms,
nor would the people of the island take service together with them. He
was sorry for this.

As soon as the autumn ploughing was started up on the fields, the boys,
according to old custom, took down the boundary-fences and let all the
animals graze together. The first few days it gave them more to do, for
the animals fought until they got to know one another. They were never
wholly mingled; they always grazed in patches, each farm’s flock by
itself. The dinner-baskets were also put together, and one boy was
appointed in turn to mind the whole herd. The other boys played at
robbers up among the rocks, or ran about in the woods or on the shore.
When it was really cold they lighted bonfires, or built fireplaces of
flat stones, where they roasted apples and eggs which they stole from
the farms.

It was a glorious life, and Pelle was happy. It was true he was the
smallest of them all, and his being a Swede was a drawback to him. In
the midst of their play, the others would sometimes begin to mimic his
way of talking, and when he grew angry asked why he did not draw his
knife. But on the other hand he was from the biggest farm, and was the
only one that had bullocks in his herd; he was not behind them in
physical accomplishments, and none of them could carve as he could. And
it was his intention, when he grew big, to thrash them all.

In the meantime he had to accommodate himself to circumstances,
ingratiate himself with the big ones, wherever he discovered there was
a flaw in their relations to one another, and be obliging. He had to
take his turn oftener than the others, and came off badly at mealtimes.
He submitted to it as something unavoidable, and directed all his
efforts toward getting the best that it was possible to get out of the
circumstances; but he promised himself, as has been said, the fullest
reparation when he grew big.

Once or twice it became too hot for him, and he left the community and
kept by himself; but he soon returned to the others again. His little
body was bursting with courage to live the life, and would not let him
shirk it; he must take his chance—eat his way through.

One day there came two new boys, who herded cattle from two farms on
the other side of the stone-quarry. They were twins, and their names
were Alfred and Albinus. They were tall, thin lads, who looked as if
they might have been half-starved when they were little; their skin had
a bluish tinge, and stood the cold badly. They were quick and active,
they could overtake the quickest calf, they could walk on their hands
and smoke at the same time, and not only vault but really jump
obstacles. They were not much good at fighting; they were lacking in
courage, and their ability forsook them in an emergency.

There was something comical about the two brothers. “Here are the
twins, the twelvins!” cried the whole flock in greeting, the first
morning they appeared. “Well, how many times have you had a baby in
your house since last year?” They belonged to a family of twelve, and
among these there had twice been twins, and this of itself was an
inexhaustible source of raillery; and moreover they were half Swedish.
They shared the disadvantage with Pelle.

But nothing seemed to have any effect upon them; they grinned at
everything, and gave themselves away still more. From all he saw and
heard, Pelle could understand that there was something ridiculous about
their home in the eyes of the parish; but they did not mind that. It
was the fecundity of their parents that was the special subject of
derision, and the two boys quite happily exposed them to ridicule, and
would tell all about the most private home matters. One day when the
flock had been most persistent in calling “Twelvins!” they said,
grinning, that their mother would soon be having a thirteenth. They
were incapable of being wounded.

Every time they exposed their parents to ridicule, it hurt Pelle, for
his own feelings on this point were the most sacred that he had. Try as
he would, he could not understand them; he had to go to his father with
the matter one evening.

“So they mock and make fun of their own parents?” said Lasse. “Then
they’ll never prosper in this world, for you’re to honor your father
and mother. Good parents who have brought them into the world with
pain, and must toil hard, perhaps hunger and put up with much
themselves, to get food and clothing for them! Oh, it’s a shame! And
you say their surname is Karlsson like ours, and that they live on the
heath behind the stone-quarry? Then they must be brother Kalle’s sons!
Why, bless my soul, if I don’t believe that’s it! You ask them tomorrow
if their father hasn’t a notch in his right ear! I did it myself with a
piece of a horse-shoe when we were little boys one day I was in a rage
with him because he made fun of me before the others. He was just the
same as those two, but he didn’t mean anything by it, there was nothing
ill-natured about him.”

The boys’ father _had_ a notch in his right ear. Pelle and they were
thus cousins; and the way that both they and their parents were made
fun of was a matter for both laughter and tears. In a way, Father Lasse
too came in for a share of the ridicule, and that thought was hardly to
be endured.

The other boys quickly discovered Pelle’s vulnerable point, and used it
for their own advantage; and Pelle had to give way and put up with
things in order to keep his father out of their conversation. He did
not always succeed, however. When they were in the mood, they said
quite absurd things about one another’s homes. They were not intended
to be taken for more than they were worth, but Pelle did not understand
jokes on that head. One day one of the biggest boys said to him: “Do
you know, your father was the cause of his own mother’s having a
child!” Pelle did not understand the play of words in this coarse joke,
but he heard the laughter of the others, and becoming blind with rage,
he flew at the big boy, and kicked him so hard in the stomach, that he
had to keep his bed for several days.

During those days, Pelle went about in fear and trembling. He dared not
tell his father what had happened, for then he would be obliged to
repeat the boy’s ugly accusation, too; so he went about in dread of the
fatal consequences. The other boys had withdrawn themselves from him,
so as not to share the blame if anything came of it; the boy was a
farmer’s son—the only one in the company—and they had visions of the
magistrate at the back of the affair, and perhaps a caning at the
town-hall. So Pelle went by himself with his cattle, and had plenty of
time to think about the event, which, by the force of his lively
imagination, grew larger and larger in its consequences, until at last
it almost suffocated him with terror. Every cart he saw driving along
the high-road sent a thrill through him; and if it turned up toward
Stone Farm, he could distinctly see the policemen—three of them—with
large handcuffs, just as they had come to fetch Erik Erikson for
ill-treating his wife. He hardly dared drive the cattle home in the
evening.

One morning the boy came herding over there with his cattle, and there
was a grown-up man with him, whom, from his clothes and everything else
about him, Pelle judged to be a farmer—was it the boy’s father? They
stood over there for a little while, talking to the herd-boys, and then
came across toward him, with the whole pack at their heels, the father
holding his son by the hand.

The perspiration started from every pore of Pelle’s body; his fear
prompted him to run away, but he stood his ground. Together the father
and son made a movement with their hand, and Pelle raised both elbows
to ward off a double box-on-the-ears.

But they only extended their hands. “I beg your pardon,” said the boy,
taking one of Pelle’s hands; “I beg your pardon,” repeated the father,
clasping his other hand in his. Pelle stood in bewilderment, looking
from one to the other. At first he thought that the man was the same as
the one sent by God; but it was only his eyes—those strange eyes. Then
he suddenly burst into tears and forgot all else in the relief they
brought from the terrible anxiety. The two spoke a few kind words to
him, and quietly went away to let him be alone.

After this Pelle and Peter Kure became friends, and when Pelle learnt
to know him better, he discovered that sometimes the boy had a little
of the same look in his eyes as his father, and the young fisherman,
and the man that was sent by God. The remarkable course that the event
had taken occupied his mind for a long time. One day a chance
comparison of his experiences brought him to the discovery of the
connection between this mysterious expression in their eyes and their
remarkable actions; the people who had looked at him with those eyes
had all three done unexpected things. And another day it dawned upon
him that these people were _religious_; the boys had quarrelled with
Peter Kure that day, and had used the word as a term of abuse against
his parents.

There was one thing that was apparent, and outweighed everything, even
his victory. He had entered the lists with a boy who was bigger and
stronger than he, and had held his own, because for the first time in
his life he had struck out recklessly. If you wanted to fight, you had
to kick wherever it hurt most. If you only did that, and had justice on
your side, you might fight anybody, even a farmer’s son. These were two
satisfactory discoveries, which for the present nothing could disturb.

Then he had defended his father; that was something quite new and
important in his life. He required more space now.

At Michaelmas, the cattle were taken in, and the last of the day-
laborers left. During the summer, several changes had been made among
the regular servants at the farm, but now, at term-day, none were
changed; it was not the habit of Stone Farm to change servants at the
regular term-times.

So Pelle again helped his father with the foddering indoors. By rights
he should have begun to go to school, and a mild representation of this
fact was made to the farmer by the school authorities; but the boy was
very useful at home, as the care of the cattle was too much for one
man; and nothing more was heard about the matter. Pelle was glad it was
put off. He had thought much about school in the course of the summer,
and had invested it with so much that was unfamiliar and great that he
was now quite afraid of it.




VII


Christmas Eve was a great disappointment. It was the custom for the
herd-boys to come out and spend Christmas at the farms where they
served in the summer, and Pelle’s companions had told him of all the
delights of Christmas—roast meat and sweet drinks, Christmas games and
ginger-nuts and cakes; it was one endless eating and drinking and
playing of Christmas games, from the evening before Christmas Eve until
“Saint Knut carried Christmas out,” on January 7th. That was what it
was like at all the small farms, the only difference being that those
who were religious did not play cards, but sang hymns instead. But what
they had to eat was just as good.

The last few days before Christmas Pelle had to get up at two or
half-past two to help the girls pluck poultry, and the old thatcher
Holm to heat the oven. With this his connection with the delights of
Christmas came to an end. There was dried cod and boiled rice on
Christmas Eve, and it tasted good enough; but of all the rest there was
nothing. There were a couple of bottles of brandy on the table for the
men, that was all. The men were discontented and quarrelsome. They
poured milk and boiled rice into the leg of the stocking that Karna was
knitting, so that she was fuming the whole evening; and then sat each
with his girl on his knee, and made ill-natured remarks about
everything. The old farm-laborers and their wives, who had been invited
to partake of the Christmas fare, talked about death and all the ills
of the world.

Upstairs there was a large party. All the wife’s relations were
invited, and they were hard at work on the roast goose. The yard was
full of conveyances, and the only one of the farm-servants who was in
good spirits was the head man, who received all the tips. Gustav was in
a thoroughly bad humor, for Bodil was upstairs helping to wait. He had
brought his concertina over, and was playing love-songs. It was putting
them into better spirits, and the evil expression was leaving their
eyes; one after another they started singing, and it began to be quite
comfortable down there. But just then a message came to say that they
must make less noise, so the assembly broke up, the old people going
home, and the young ones dispersing in couples according to the
friendships of the moment.

Lasse and Pelle went to bed.

“What’s Christmas really for?” asked Pelle.

Lasse rubbed his thigh reflectively.

“It has to be,” he answered hesitatingly. “Yes, and then it’s the time
when the year turns round and goes upward, you see! And of course it’s
the night when the Child Jesus was born, too!” It took him a long time
to produce this last reason, but when it did come it was with perfect
assurance. “Taking one thing with another, you see,” he added, after a
short pause.

On the day after Christmas Day there was a kind of subscription
merrymaking at an enterprising crofter’s down in the village; it was to
cost two and a half krones a couple for music, sandwiches, and spirits
in the middle of the night, and coffee toward morning. Gustav and Bodil
were going. Pelle at any rate saw a little of Christmas as it passed,
and was as interested in it as if it concerned himself; and he gave
Lasse no rest from his questions that day. So Bodil was still faithful
to Gustav, after all!

When they got up the next morning, they found Gustav lying on the
ground by the cow-stable door, quite helpless, and his good clothes in
a sad state. Bodil was not with him. “Then she’s deceived him,” said
Lasse, as they helped him in. “Poor boy! Only seventeen, and a wounded
heart already! The women’ll be his ruin one of these days, you’ll see!”

At midday, when the farm-laborers’ wives came to do the milking,
Lasse’s supposition was confirmed: Bodil had attached herself to a
tailor’s apprentice from the village, and had left with him in the
middle of the night. They laughed pityingly at Gustav, and for some
time after he had to put up with their gibes at his ill-success; but
there was only one opinion about Bodil. She was at liberty to come and
go with whomsoever she liked, but as long as Gustav was paying for her
amusements, she ought to have kept to him. Who but the neighbor would
keep the hens that ate their grain at home and laid their eggs at the
neighbor’s?

There had as yet been no opportunity to visit Lasse’s brother beyond
the stone-quarry, but it was to be done on the second day of the new
year. Between Christmas and the New Year the men did nothing after
dark, and it was the custom everywhere to help the herdsman with his
evening occupations. There was nothing of that here; Lasse was too old
to assert himself, and Pelle too little. They might think themselves
lucky they did not have to do the foddering for the men who went out as
well as their own.

But to-day it was to come off; Gustav and Long Ole had undertaken to do
the evening work. Pelle began to look forward to it as soon as he was
up—he was up every day by half-past three. But as Lasse used to say, if
you sing before breakfast you’ll weep before night.

After dinner, Gustav and Ole were standing grinding chopping knives
down in the lower yard. The trough leaked, and Pelle had to pour water
on the grindstone out of an old kettle. His happiness could be seen on
his face.

“What are you so pleased about?” asked Gustav. “Your eyes are shining
like the cat’s in the dark.”

Pelle told him.

“I’m afraid you won’t get away!” said Ole, winking at Gustav. “We
shan’t get the chaff cut time enough to do the foddering. This
grindstone’s so confoundedly hard to turn, too. If only that
handle-turner hadn’t been broken!”

Pelle pricked up his ears. “Handle-turner? What’s that?” he asked.

Gustav sprang round the grindstone, and slapped his thigh in enjoyment
of the joke.

“My goodness, how stupid you are! Don’t you even know what a
handle-turner is? It’s a thing you only need to put on to the
grindstone, and it turns it by itself. They’ve got one by-the-way over
at Kaase Farm,” he said, turning to Ole; “if only it wasn’t so far
away.”

“Is it heavy?” asked Pelle, in a low voice; everything depended upon
the answer. “Can I lift it?” His voice trembled.

“Oh, no, not so awfully heavy. You could carry it quite well. But you’d
have to be very careful.”

“I can run over and fetch it; I’ll carry it very carefully.” Pelle
looked at them with a face that could not but inspire confidence.

“Very well; but take a sack with you to put it in. And you’ll have to
be as careful as the very devil, for it’s an expensive thing.”

Pelle found a sack and ran off across the fields. He was as delighted
as a young kid, plucking at himself and everything as he ran, and
jumping aside to frighten the crows. He was overflowing with happiness.
He was saving the expedition for himself and Father Lasse. Gustav and
Ole were good men! He would get back as quickly as possible, so that
they should not have to toil any more at the grindstone. “What, are you
back already?” they would say, and open their eyes. “Then you must have
smashed that precious machine on the way!” And they would take it
carefully out of the sack, and it would be quite safe and sound. “Well,
you are a wonder of a boy! a perfect prince!” they would say.

When he got to Kaase Farm, they wanted him to go in to a Christmas meal
while they were putting the machine into the sack; but Pelle said “No”
and held to it: he had not time. So they gave him a piece of cold apple
out on the steps, so that he should not carry Christmas away. They all
looked so pleasant, and every one came out when he hoisted the sack on
his back and set off home. They too recommended him to be very careful,
and seemed anxious, as if he could hardly realize what he was carrying.

It was a good mile between the farms, but it was an hour and a half
before Pelle reached home, and then he was ready to drop. He dared not
put down the sack to rest, but stumbled on step by step, only resting
once by leaning against a stone fence. When at last he staggered into
the yard, every one came up to see the neighbor’s new handle-turner;
and Pelle was conscious of his own importance when Ole carefully lifted
the sack from his back. He leaned for a moment over toward the wall
before he regained his balance; the ground was so strange to tread upon
now he was rid of his burden; it pushed him away. But his face was
radiant.

Gustav opened the sack, which was securely closed, and shook out its
contents upon the stone pavement. They were pieces of brick, a couple
of old ploughshares, and other similar things. Pelle stared in
bewilderment and fear at the rubbish, looking as if he had just dropped
from another planet; but when laughter broke out on all sides, he
understood what it all meant, and, crouching down, hid his face in his
hands. He would not cry—not for the world; they should not have that
satisfaction. He was sobbing in his heart, but he kept his lips tightly
closed. His body tingled with rage. The beasts! The wicked devils!
Suddenly he kicked Gustav on the leg.

“Aha, so he kicks, does he?” exclaimed Gustav, lifting him up into the
air. “Do you want to see a little imp from Smaaland?” Pelle covered his
face with his arms and kicked to be let down; and he also made an
attempt to bite. “Eh, and he bites, too, the little devil!” Gustav had
to hold him firmly so as to manage him. He held him by the collar,
pressing his knuckles against the boy’s throat and making him gasp,
while he spoke with derisive gentleness. “A clever youngster, this!
He’s scarcely out of long clothes, and wants to fight already!” Gustav
went on tormenting him; it looked as if he were making a display of his
superior strength.

“Well, now we’ve seen that you’re the strongest,” said the head man at
last, “so let him go!” and when Gustav did not respond immediately, he
received a blow from a clenched fist between his shoulder-blades. Then
the boy was released, and went over to the stable to Lasse, who had
seen the whole thing, but had not dared to approach. He could do
nothing, and his presence would only have done harm.

“Yes, and then there’s our outing, laddie,” he explained, by way of
excuse, while he was comforting the boy. “I could very well thrash a
puppy like Gustav, but if I did we shouldn’t get away this evening, for
he wouldn’t do our work. And none of the others, either, for they all
stick together like burrs. But you can do it yourself! I verily believe
you’d kick the devil himself, right on his club-foot! Well, well, it
was well done; but you must be careful not to waste your powder and
shot. It doesn’t pay!”

The boy was not so easily comforted now. Deep down in his heart the
remembrance of his injury lay and pained him, because he had acted in
such good faith, and they had wounded him in his ready, cheerful
confidence. What had happened had also stung his pride; he had walked
into a trap, made a fool of himself for them. The incident burnt into
his soul, and greatly influenced his subsequent development. He had
already found out that a person’s word was not always to be relied
upon, and he had made awkward attempts to get behind it. Now he would
trust nobody straight away any more; and he had discovered how the
secret was to be found out. You only had to look at people’s eyes when
they said anything. Both here and at Kaase Farm the people had looked
so strange about the handle-turner, as if they were laughing inside.
And the bailiff had laughed that time when he promised them roast pork
and stewed rhubarb every day. They hardly ever got anything but herring
and porridge. People talked with two tongues; Father Lasse was the only
one who did not do it.

Pelle began to be observant of his own face. It was the face that
spoke, and that was why it went badly with him when he tried to escape
a thrashing by telling a white lie. And to-day’s misfortune had been
the fault of his face; if you felt happy, you mustn’t show it. He had
discovered the danger of letting his mind lie open, and his small
organism set to work diligently to grow hard skin to draw over its
vital parts.

After supper they set off across the fields, hand in hand as usual. As
a rule, Pelle chattered unceasingly when they were by themselves; but
this evening he was quieter. The event of the afternoon was still in
his mind, and the coming visit gave him a feeling of solemnity.

Lasse carried a red bundle in his hand, in which was a bottle of
black-currant rum, which they had got Per Olsen to buy in the town the
day before, when he had been in to swear himself free. It had cost
sixty-six öres, and Pelle was turning something over in his mind, but
did not know whether it would do.

“Father!” he said at last. “Mayn’t I carry that a little way?”

“Gracious! Are you crazy, boy? It’s an expensive article! And you might
drop it.”

“I wouldn’t drop it. Well, only hold it for a little then? Mayn’t I,
father? Oh do, father!”

“Eh, what an idea! I don’t know what you’ll be like soon, if you aren’t
stopped! Upon my word, I think you must be ill, you’re getting so
tiresome!” And Lasse went on crossly for a little while, but then
stopped and bent down over the boy.

“Hold it then, you little silly, but be very careful! And you mustn’t
move a single step while you’ve got it, mind!”

Pelle clasped the bottle to his body with his arms, for he dared not
trust his hands, and pushed out his stomach as far as possible to
support it. Lasse stood with his hands extended beneath the bottle,
ready to catch it if it fell.

“There! That’ll do!” he said anxiously, and took the bottle.

“It _is_ heavy!” said Pelle, admiringly, and went on contentedly,
holding his father’s hand.

“But why had he to swear himself free?” he suddenly asked.

“Because he was accused by a girl of being the father of her child.
Haven’t you heard about it?”

Pelle nodded. “Isn’t he, then? Everybody says he is.”

“I can hardly believe it; it would be certain damnation for Per Olsen.
But, of course, the girl says it’s him and no one else. Ah me! Girls
are dangerous playthings! You must take care when your time comes, for
they can bring misfortune upon the best of men.”

“How do you swear, then? Do you say ‘Devil take me’?”

Lasse could not help laughing. “No, indeed! That wouldn’t be very good
for those that swear false. No, you see, in the court all God’s highest
ministers are sitting round a table that’s exactly like a horseshoe,
and beyond that again there’s an altar with the crucified Christ
Himself upon it. On the altar lies a big, big book that’s fastened to
the wall with an iron chain, so that the devil can’t carry it off in
the night, and that’s God’s Holy Word. When a man swears, he lays his
left hand upon the book, and holds up his right hand with three fingers
in the air; they’re God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. But if he
swears false, the Governor can see it at once, because then there are
red spots of blood on the leaves of the book.”

“And what then?” asked Pelle, with deep interest.

“Well, then his three fingers wither, and it goes on eating itself into
his body. People like that suffer frightfully; they rot right away.”

“Don’t they go to hell, then?”

“Yes, they do that too, except when they give themselves up and take
their punishment, and then they escape in the next life; but they can’t
escape withering away.”

“Why doesn’t the Governor take them himself and punish them, when he
can see in that book that they swore false?”

“Why, because then they’d get off going to hell, and there’s an
agreement with Satan that he’s to have all those that don’t give
themselves up, don’t you see?”

Pelle shuddered, and for a little while walked on in silence beside his
father; but when he next spoke, he had forgotten all about it.

“I suppose Uncle Kalle’s rich, isn’t he?” he asked.

“He can’t be rich, but he’s a land-owner, and that’s not a little
thing!” Lasse himself had never attained to more than renting land.

“When I grow up, I mean to have a great big farm,” said Pelle, with
decision.

“Yes, I’ve no doubt you will,” said Lasse, laughing. Not that he also
did not expect something great of the boy, if not exactly a large
farmer. There was no saying, however. Perhaps some farmer’s daughter
might fall in love with him; the men of his family generally had an
attraction for women. Several of them had given proof of it—his
brother, for instance, who had taken the fancy of a parson’s wife. Then
Pelle would have to make the most of his opportunity so that the family
would be ashamed to oppose the match. And Pelle was good enough. He had
that “cow’s-lick” on his forehead, fine hair at the back of his neck,
and a birth-mark on his hip; and that all betokened luck. Lasse went on
talking to himself as he walked, calculating the boy’s future with
large, round figures, that yielded a little for him too; for, however
great his future might be, it would surely come in time to allow of
Lasse’s sharing and enjoying it in his very old age.

They went across country toward the stone-quarry, following stone dikes
and snow-filled ditches, and working their way through the thicket of
blackthorn and juniper, behind which lay the rocks and “the Heath.”
They made their way right into the quarry, and tried in the darkness to
find the place where the dross was thrown, for that would be where the
stone-breaking went on.

A sound of hammering came from the upper end of the ground, and they
discovered lights in several places. Beneath a sloping straw screen,
from which hung a lantern, sat a little, broad man, hammering away at
the fragments. He worked with peculiar vivacity—struck three blows and
pushed the stones to one side, another three blows, and again to one
side; and while with one hand he pushed the pieces away, with the other
he placed a fresh fragment in position on the stone. It went as busily
and evenly as the ticking of a watch.

“Why, if that isn’t Brother Kalle sitting there!” said Lasse, in a
voice of surprise as great as if the meeting were a miracle from
heaven. “Good evening, Kalle Karlsson! How are you?”

The stone-breaker looked up.

“Oh, there you are, brother!” he said, rising with difficulty; and the
two greeted one another as if they had met only the day before. Kalle
collected his tools and laid the screen down upon them while they
talked.

“So you break stones too? Does that bring in anything?” asked Lasse.

“Oh, not very much. We get twelve krones a ‘fathom’ and when I work
with a lantern morning and evening, I can break half a fathom in a
week. It doesn’t pay for beer, but we live anyhow. But it’s awfully
cold work; you can’t keep warm at it, and you get so stiff with sitting
fifteen hours on the cold stone—as stiff as if you were the father of
the whole world.” He was walking stiffly in front of the others across
the heath toward a low, hump-backed cottage.

“Ah, there comes the moon, now there’s no use for it!” said Kalle,
whose spirits were beginning to rise. “And, my word, what a sight the
old dormouse looks! He must have been at a New Year’s feast in heaven.”

“You’re the same merry devil that you were in the old days,” said
Lasse.

“Well, good spirits’ll soon be the only thing to be had without paying
for.”

The wall of the house stuck out in a large round lump on one side, and
Pelle had to go up to it to feel it all over. It was most mysterious
what there might be on the other side—perhaps a secret chamber? He
pulled his father’s hand inquiringly.

“That? That’s the oven where they bake their bread,” said Lasse. “It’s
put there to make more room.”

After inviting them to enter, Kalle put his head in at a door that led
from the kitchen to the cowshed. “Hi, Maria! You must put your best
foot foremost!” he called in a low voice. “The midwife’s here!”

“What in the world does she want? It’s a story, you old fool!” And the
sound of milk squirting into the pail began again.

“A story, is it? No, but you must come in and go to bed; she says it’s
high time you did. You are keeping up much too long this year. Mind
what you say,” he whispered into the cowshed, “for she is really here!
And be quick!”

They went into the room, and Kalle went groping about to light a
candle. Twice he took up the matches and dropped them again to light it
at the fire, but the peat was burning badly. “Oh, bother!” he said,
resolutely striking a match at last. “We don’t have visitors every
day.”

“Your wife’s Danish,” said Lasse, admiringly. “And you’ve got a cow
too?”

“Yes, it’s a biggish place here,” said Kalle, drawing himself up.
“There’s a cat belonging to the establishment too, and as many rats as
it cares to eat.”

His wife now appeared, breathless, and looking in astonishment at the
visitors.

“Yes, the midwife’s gone again,” said Kalle. “She hadn’t time to-day;
we must put it off till another time. But these are important
strangers, so you must blow your nose with your fingers before you give
them your hand!”

“Oh, you old humbug! You can’t take me in. It’s Lasse, of course, and
Pelle!” And she held out her hand. She was short, like her husband, was
always smiling, and had bowed arms and legs just as he had. Hard work
and their cheerful temperament gave them both a rotund appearance.

“There are no end of children here,” said Lasse, looking about him.
There were three in the turn-up bedstead under the window—two small
ones at one end, and a long, twelve-year-old boy at the other, his
black feet sticking out between the little girls’ heads; and other beds
were made up on chairs, in an old kneading-trough, and on the floor.

“Ye-es; we’ve managed to scrape together a few,” said Kalle, running
about in vain to get something for his visitors to sit upon; everything
was being used as beds. “You’ll have to spit on the floor and sit down
on that,” he said, laughing.

His wife came in, however, with a washing-bench and an empty
beer-barrel.

“Sit you down and rest,” she said, placing the seats round the table.
“And you must really excuse it, but the children must be somewhere.”

Kalle squeezed himself in and sat down upon the edge of the turn-up
bedstead. “Yes, we’ve managed to scrape together a few,” he repeated.
“You must provide for your old age while you have the strength. We’ve
made up the dozen, and started on the next. It wasn’t exactly our
intention, but mother’s gone and taken us in.” He scratched the back of
his head, and looked the picture of despair.

His wife was standing in the middle of the room. “Let’s hope it won’t
be twins this time too,” she said, laughing.

“Why, that would be a great saving, as we shall have to send for the
midwife anyhow. People say of mother,” he went on, “that when she’s put
the children to bed she has to count them to make sure they’re all
there; but that’s not true, because she can’t count farther than ten.”

Here a baby in the alcove began to cry, and the mother took it up and
seated herself on the edge of the turn-up bedstead to nurse it. “And
this is the smallest,” he said, holding it out toward Lasse, who put a
crooked finger down its neck.

“What a little fatty!” he said softly; he was fond of children. “And
what’s its name?”

“She’s called Dozena Endina, because when she came we thought that was
to be the last; and she was the twelfth too.”

“Dozena Endina! That’s a mighty fine name!” exclaimed Lasse. “It sounds
exactly as if she might be a princess.”

“Yes, and the one before’s called Ellen—from eleven, of course. That’s
her in the kneading-trough,” said Kalle. “The one before that again is
Tentius, and then Nina, and Otto. The ones before that weren’t named in
that way, for we hadn’t thought then that there’d be so many. But
that’s all mother’s fault; if she only puts a patch on my
working-trousers, things go wrong at once.”

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, trying to get out of it like
that,” said his wife, shaking her finger at him. “But as for that,” she
went on, turning to Lasse, “I’m sure the others have nothing to
complain of either, as far as their names are concerned. Albert, Anna,
Alfred, Albinus, Anton, Alma and Alvilda—let me see, yes, that’s the
lot. None of them can say they’ve not been treated fairly. Father was
all for A at that time; they were all to rhyme with A. Poetry’s always
come so easy to him.” She looked admiringly at her husband.

Kalle blinked his eyes in bashfulness. “No, but it’s the first letter,
you see, and it sounds pretty,” he said modestly.

“Isn’t he clever to think of a thing like that? He ought to have been a
student. Now _my_ head would never have been any good for anything of
that sort. He wanted, indeed, to have the names both begin and end with
A, but that wouldn’t do with the boys, so he had to give that up. But
then he hasn’t had any book-learning either.”

“Oh, that’s too bad, mother! I didn’t give it up. I’d made up a name
for the first boy that had A at the end too; but then the priest and
the clerk objected, and I had to let it go. They objected to Dozena
Endina too, but I put my foot down; for I can be angry if I’m irritated
too long. I’ve always liked to have some connection and meaning in
everything; and it’s not a bad idea to have something that those who
look deeper can find out. Now, have you noticed anything special about
two of these names?”

“No,” answered Lasse hesitatingly, “I don’t know that I have. But I
haven’t got a head for that sort of thing either.”

“Well, look here! Anna and Otto are exactly the same, whether you read
them forward or backward—exactly the same. I’ll just show you.” He took
down a child’s slate that was hanging on the wall with a stump of
slate-pencil, and began laboriously to write the names. “Now, look at
this, brother!”

“I can’t read,” said Lasse, shaking his head hopelessly. “Does it
really give the same both ways? The deuce! That _is_ remarkable!” He
could not get over his astonishment.

“But now comes something that’s still more remarkable,” said Kalle,
looking over

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