Then, overcome by dizziness, he stole on all fours down the stairs.
The shop windows were ablaze, and the streets full of people. It was all like some great festival, thought Sivert, as he trotted along in the gutter.
Suddenly it struck him that he might encounter Olsen.
Wasn’t that Olsen coming round the corner there? Sivert did not stay to make closer investigation, but raced off down the first turning. And there—Heaven preserve him!—was Olsen himself, coming out of a tavern not ten paces away. It was Olsen this time. Leaning up against the railing just as Olsen always did. Sivert turned round and fled, as if the lightnings of retribution were at his heels, dodging in a zigzag through a maze of intercrossing streets.
He came into quarters of the town where he had never been before, and met four more Olsens on his way. Once with a girl on his arm, once in the very gateway where he was hiding in fear of—yes, of that same Olsen.
At last he found the road he sought—the road to Knarreby. The distance between the houses increased, and the gale rose to a hurricane. It was full in his face now, and beating against his cheeks with a torrent of sand and stones, but he bent forward and drew his cap down over his eyes, sighting at the next lamp-post through the split between the peak and the cloth top, and keeping his hands behind his back.
Yes, he would manage it now!
Then suddenly there were no more lamp-posts to go by. The last one shed its gleam a few yards round, a solitary figure of a lamp, the extreme outpost, rattling its glass with a noise as of chattering teeth in the cold, and its flame hopping from the wick at every gust. Sivert set his back against it—he dared not give himself up entirely to the gaping jaws of the black dark ahead.
He knew the place well, by the way; he had stood here many a Sunday afternoon, staring out towards Knarreby. The tears welled up chokingly within him now.