SHERIFF. [To KERSTI] Did you kill the child?
KERSTI. I did!
MATS'S RELATIVES. There you hear!
KERSTI'S RELATIVES. God have mercy!
MATS'S RELATIVES. Now you can hear!
MATS has been standing at the fireplace lost in thought, with his back to the rest. Suddenly he tears off everything that indicates his character of bridegroom. After a brief moment of hesitation, he leaps like mad on the table in the rear and disappears through the opening where the fiddlers were seated before.
PASTOR. [Who has been weeping silently, with his hands covering his face, goes to the open trap-door and says]
"To the dead
Give peace, O Lord,
And console
The living!"[2]
All bend their heads, shade their faces with one hand, and pray in silence, as the custom is when the Lord's Prayer is read in a Swedish church or at a grave.
PASTOR. May the Lord bless you and protect you!