“Yes, of course, Henry.” She still laughed with delight, but was obliged to sit down. “What has he done?” she thought, sitting and gazing straight before her. “God help me!” Everything seemed to crumble to pieces, and she gazed into his guilt in everything, in everything! But this could not be! It must not, must not be! She might have made a mistake. She would not look at the letter any more, and she gave it back to him with a smile, and begged him to take good care of it. It might perhaps help him a little, only a little; for he must be let off.
That evening, when they were in bed, she said: “You don’t write any more in the papers now, Henry, but I think it might very well come to the knowledge of the public how the pastor and Thora have behaved to us.”
“Yes,” he said; “and it might be a good thing if it were read by the jurymen, too, before they went to pass verdict on me.”
And they tried to sleep, with hands interclasped.
[CHAPTER VI]
A MAN was coming down the hills from the north, and stopped at Norby Sæter, at the door of which Einar was sitting making a birch-broom.
While the stranger lay full length upon the grass, his head resting on his wallet, he related how he had met a she-bear and two cubs west of the Great Snow-field. As news from the valley, he mentioned that Wangen’s trial was to take place that day.
“Indeed?” said Einar, and went on with his birch-broom.
He rowed the man across the mountain lake, for he was going west and down into the other valley. Einar heard that the doctor’s twenty-year-old daughter had come up to Buvik Sæter, and this awakened pleasant recollections of the ball at Christmas.