THE PEASANTS. We will join them! We will help! We will free
ourselves!
LADY INGER (aside). Can the time be come?
EINAR HUK. From all our borderlands the peasants are pouring across to the Dales. Even outlaws that have wandered for years in the mountains are venturing down to the homesteads again, and drawing men together, and whetting their rusty swords.
LADY INGER (after a pause). Tell me, men, have you thought well of this? Have you counted the cost, if King Gustav's men should win?
BIORN (softly and imploringly to LADY INGER). Count the cost
to the Danes if King Gustav's men should lose.
LADY INGER (evasively). That reckoning is not for me to make.
(Turns to the people).
You know that King Gustav is sure of help from Denmark. King
Frederick is his friend, and will never leave him in the lurch——
EINAR HUK. But if the people were now to rise all over Norway's land?—if we all rose as one man, nobles and peasants together?— ay, Lady Inger Gyldenlove, the time we have waited for is surely come. We have but to rise now to drive the strangers from the land.
THE PEASANTS. Ay, out with the Danish sheriffs! Out with the foreign masters! Out with the Councillors' lackeys!
LADY INGER (aside). Ah, there is metal in them; and yet, yet——!
BIORN (to himself). She is of two minds. (To ELINA.) What say you now, Mistress Elina—have you not sinned in misjudging your mother?