“Ah well,” said Marit quietly, “this can be an example to others, and encourage people to be patient and enduring.”
“Yes,” said Norby, stopping at the window, where he could see the fjord in the moonlight, “the main thing is to act honourably and uprightly.” In a little while he said: “I don’t know how it is, but I seem to have been away from Norby for a long time, and only to have properly come home again now.”
“Dear me, yes!” yawned Marit. “But it has been a hard time.”
Norby still looked out over the lake in the moonlight. “There must have been some purpose in it all,” he said. “I may often have acted with too great severity, but now I think it will be better for every one in the district. I shall do my part, at any rate.”
His wife did not answer: presumably she was too tired.
When at last Norby got into bed, he folded his hands and said a couple of verses of a hymn. He felt so near to God; and the respect and sympathy of the whole district now shone into his conscience, but he would thank God for it all.
“But there is one thing I can’t understand,” he thought after a while, “and that is how people can stand like Wangen with a calm face and lie in court. God help those who have no more conscience than to do it!”
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[Transcriber’s Note]
This transcription is based on two sets of images posted by the HathiTrust Digital Library. The first, digitized by Google from a copy made available by the University of Minnesota, is available at: