When the old man was sitting in the little room at dusk, he heard little Knut laughing in the next room, and rose to go in to him, but stopped at the door. He was not equal to seeing little Knut to-day.
“Perhaps he had a hand in bringing your father to such a bad end too,” he said to himself, thinking of the child. At any rate, Wangen was at Lillehammer fair that time.
One day went by, and then another. The old man was on thorns. But every time he thought of changing his clothes and going to the bailiff, he half unconsciously began to conjure up a picture of Wangen, to remember bad things about him, to place him in a ridiculous or an odious light, to impute to him all kinds of repulsive failings; and this gave him fresh courage to put off going, and he felt it more and more impossible that he should humble himself to such a man.
And suppose that Wangen was to blame for his son’s death? Although this possibility made the old man sick with anger, he was still uneasy in his mind. The witness, Jörgen Haarstad, was dead, it was true; but Knut Norby would not disown his signature. There must be some back way out of it.
[CHAPTER IV]
HENRY WANGEN descended from the snow-covered train from Christiania, and with his bag in his hand hurried homewards. He exchanged greetings with no one. His failure would ruin half the parish, and he knew that people stood and looked after him as they would after a rogue they would like to thrash.
He was a man of about five-and-thirty, tall and spare, with a reddish beard and a refined, youthful face. But he walked like an old man. His going humbly from one merchant to another in Christiania had been in vain; and he dreaded going home, because his wife must at last be told the truth.
Henry Wangen was the son of a magistrate who had misappropriated the public funds. He had tried many occupations, but was an agriculturist when he married the daughter of a wealthy fanner. Her father, who had long opposed the marriage, made it a condition that she should have the control of her own property. But when Wangen started the brickfields, he not only obtained his wife’s confidence and money, but he was so eloquent and enthusiastic that he also induced her father and brother, and many others, to entrust him with their money. And now?