He was a tall, slim, fair young man of about five-and-twenty. His not yet having taken his degree was not owing to laziness. He had first studied theology for a couple of years; but one day he had gone home and had appeared before his father in his office to say privately that he could not go on with it any longer, that his conscience would not let him be a priest.
His father sat gnawing the end of his pipe, and when he had listened to his son’s explanation, said:
“Well, well, you’re quite right, my boy, to give it up if you are so sure of what you’re doing. It’ll be worse for your mother; but I must try and talk to her.” So Einar went abroad to travel for a year and look about him, and on his return he had taken up philology.
A week earlier he had heard in a letter from his mother of Wangen’s forgery, and it had at once excited his greatest astonishment, for he remembered with perfect distinctness how one day three or four years ago his father had come up to him and said: “Wangen’s got the better of me nicely to-day!” And then he had told him about the guarantee, but begged him not to tell any one, not even his mother. This had surprised him at the time, and perhaps it was for that very reason that he remembered it so distinctly.
“What shall I do?” he asked himself over and over again. It was possible there was some misunderstanding, but he nevertheless thought it best to write to his father about it.
He had had an answer to-day. The old man wrote that Einar was talking nonsense. He had never had anything to do with Wangen.
“Is it nonsense!” thought Einar as he paced his room. His father wrote quite confidently that it was all nonsense; but Einar took heaven to witness that it was not. The more he thought about it, the more certain he was that he remembered accurately.
“But what shall I do?” he said again; for he felt that he could not at once give in about it. “Suppose Wangen is innocent and I am the only person who can save him. Mother wrote too that Wangen had no witnesses. What shall I do?”
The inquiry was to take place in a few days, so he could not put off acting any longer.
“And father writes that he has never had anything to do with Wangen; so it cannot refer to some other matter than the one I remember. Is it possible that father is so forgetful, or——?”