“‘And you are not damned, after all?’
“‘Not that I know of,’ said Nilssen.
“‘That is not the old hut, though, I will take my oath.’
“‘No,’ said Nilssen, ‘it is not; the other was very nearly to pieces, as you may recollect, when we were last here. The roof fell in not a month after that, and then the authorities of the three Ampts contrived to settle their differences, and do what they ought to have done years ago—build a new one at their joint expense. They have not made a bad job of it. Come in, you are cold enough.’
“‘And I have been lying out in this cursed rain and wind all night,’ said my father, ‘with a good fire before my eyes, and a warm roof within fifty yards of me, fancying all the while that you were damned, and that you wanted to take me off to the Devil along with you! What a confounded fool I have been!’
“But I am not sure that my father was such a fool either,” continued Torkel, “for Nilssen died very soon after that; in fact, he had caught a bad cold during that night, and as he had sold us a lot of bad fish, I have no doubt he was damned; at all events, it is quite true that from that day forward my father was never entirely free from the rheumatism, and this in his latter days, when he began to get religious, he always attributed to the sight of the fire in the post-house; for he never was without his misgivings that Nilssen had been damned before he met him. He once went as far as Hardnæs to ask the priest about it, and he said that the idea was new to him, certainly, but that he would not take upon himself to pronounce it impossible. To the very end of his life, my father used to congratulate himself upon the fortitude and self-denial he had evinced during that terrible night, ‘because,’ said he, ‘if the bare sight of that fire through the mist was visited so severely, no one can say what would have been the consequence had I sat by it all night.’”
“No,” said the Parson, solemnly, “no one can.”
“You see,” said Torkel, “the whole question hinges on the fact whether Nilssen was damned or not; now he certainly did take us in about the fish—we were obliged to throw away half of it. I should like very much to have your opinion on the subject.”
“Why,” said the Parson, gravely, “will you take upon yourself to say, on your conscience, as a Christian man, that there was no potato-haulm in the wash from which your brandy was distilled?”
Torkel laughed, and rubbed his hands at the recollection. “No,” said he, “that I will not; I do not think the old scoundrel made much by us, after all.”