He grew more and more agitated. He sat down and passed his hand again and again across his brow, then started up once more and paced the floor, with his head in a whirl. He had scarcely slept all night owing to the same thoughts.
“I must come to a decision! There are only two days left! And if I sneak out of it now, it will not exactly be a heroic deed, and ever after I shall have to keep quiet when anything is said about justice and truth.”
He looked at his watch. There was a train in a couple of hours. But just as he was about to get out his bag and pack it, he was once more seized with uncertainty. Suppose his father would not be persuaded? “What should I do then! I ought to have some plan of what I am going to do, if I am going to interfere.”
He seemed to see his father, and Norby Farm in the summer, waving cornfields, and the calm waters of Lake Mjösen. Go and give evidence? Break with them all? Bring unhappiness upon them? Never more have a home at Norby? He sank upon a chair and sighed heavily. “No, I can’t do it!”
[CHAPTER II]
THE parsonage was not far from Norby Farm. The day before the inquiry Pastor Borring began to wonder whether he could not bring about some reasonable agreement in this wicked and foolish case between two honest men.
No one knew that Pastor Borring had a secret trouble that caused him continual suffering. He believed neither in the atonement nor in the utility of the sacraments; and yet as pastor he had to say and do what was pure and true. He felt that he was too old to resign his living and start again in life; and with his present good stipend, he could help on his numerous children in the world.
But this faithlessness to his convictions had made a very good man of Pastor Borring. He knew himself sufficiently well to judge others leniently. He took no interest in gossip, for he thought that the evil that could be said about others was not nearly so bad as that which could be said about himself. Many came to him with their troubles, and it was easy for him to comfort them, because their misfortunes seemed to him small in comparison with his own. People thought him a good pastor and a noble man; and perhaps he was both of these, because he was always burning with a secret despair.
“I’m going a drive to-day,” he said to his wife.