Could it really be the Lord’s intention to starve him to death?
The thought almost brought him to his knees; he turned in through the churchyard gate, as to a refuge where he could recover himself. The naked branches of the mighty chestnuts sang in the wind, and great heavy drops fell like tears from the roof of the church.
The wind must have changed. It was thawing now.
Egholm noticed that he no longer felt the biting cold. Perhaps, after all, it was not so cruelly meant.
One end of the fire-ladder had fallen down. Egholm seated himself on it, with his back against the church wall. He was physically exhausted, and his brain had hardly rested for the past twenty-four hours.
It generally made him feel better to come in here for a while and look out over the landscape he loved.
There at his feet lay the Custom House, its acute-angled roof just on a level with the church foundations. Down in the office there sat Old Poulsen at one window and Wassermann himself at the other. Funny thing, really, that Poulsen should be called Old Poulsen, for the sake of the few grey hairs about his ears—he was an infant, really, compared with Wassermann.
How old could Wassermann be? Some said eighty-eight, but, looking at his mummy-face, one might feel more inclined to think he had stood as a man in the prime of life, wearing his gold-braided cap, what time Noah’s Ark had landed on Mount Ararat, and he had come to examine the ship’s papers.
Egholm gave a little grunt.