[CHAPTER VI]
WHEN Norby left Einar, he did not know where he went. He met some acquaintances, and had to stop and shake hands with them and chat, although he felt inclined to throw himself upon the ground and weep.
“There’s no lack of snow this winter,” he said, laughing almost convulsively at the group gathered about him, and at the same time thinking: “Now he is in there giving evidence.”
Every one without exception spoke to him with the usual deference, and gave him sympathetic glances; and this gave him fresh courage. “He’s welcome to give evidence,” he thought. “But we shall see!”
At last he was alone, and stood at the window in a little general store. Above him on the hill stood the court-house, and he could see at the window the profile of a head with a hand raised to the chin. “Now they’re enjoying the scandal,” he thought. “They think they’ve caught me when they’ve caught my boy; but wait a bit.”
It seemed to freeze something within him. This son, upon whom he had spent so many thousand krones, but who suddenly attacked his father in this way, was not Norby’s son any longer. There was only a smart, as if something had been cut away, and it made him set his teeth hard.
“They are mistaken. If I’m not man enough to overthrow his assertions, I’m not what I thought I was; for now it’s a matter of life and death in any case.” He could not help laughing, but it was a cold, hard laugh; for the thought that he was going to disgrace himself and his son by having to refute his evidence in court, made him quite fierce. “As sure as I live, they shall regret that they took the boy from me.”
When Einar entered the court, he saw at a glance that the witness-box was empty. The clerk was dictating something to be entered in the minutes. The witness’s place was waiting for him who should tell the truth. It seemed to beckon to him.
When he shut the door behind him, the little noise made him start. The door was shut now between him and his father for ever. “I can never go home again,” he thought; and at the same moment he caught sight of his mother among the audience. She smiled at him. She was flushed and perspiring with the heat. “If you only knew that I can never come home again!” thought Einar, as she made room for him beside her; and the fact that she sat there and made room for him, without suspecting why he had come, agitated him greatly. “When she hears my evidence,” he thought, “she’ll faint.”