“Perhaps so, sir; but—but, M. Kollsen, you always seemed angry; and you said you despised us for believing anything that you did not: and it is the most difficult thing in the world to ask questions which one knows will be despised.”
M. Kollsen glanced in the bishop’s face, to see how he took this, and how he meant to support the pastor’s authority. The bishop looked sad, and said nothing.
“And then,” continued Erica, “there were others who laughed—even Rolf himself laughed; and what one fears becomes only the more terrible when it is laughed at.”
“Very true,” said the bishop. “When Jesus sat on the well in Samaria, and taught how the true worship was come, He neither frowned on the woman who inquired, nor despised her, nor made light of her superstition about a sacred mountain.”
There was a long silence, which was broken at last by Erica asking the bishop whether he could not console poor Hund, who wanted comfort more than she had ever done. The bishop replied that the demons who most tormented poor Hund were not abroad on the earth or in the air, but within his breast—his remorse, his envy, his covetousness, his fear. He meant, however, not to lose sight of poor Hund, either in the prison to which he was to travel to-morrow, or after he should come out of it.
Here Frolich appeared running to ask whether those who were in the grove would not like to look forth from the ridge, and see what good the budstick had done, and how many parties were on their way from all quarters to the farm.
M. Kollsen was glad to rise and escape from what he thought a schooling, and the bishop himself was as interested in what was going on as if the farm had been his home. He was actually the first at the ridge.