It was no more than four o'clock, but I got up at once and got ready to go with him, in spite of my warning. I loaded my gun before starting out, and I let him see that I did. And it was not at all a lovely day, as he had said; it was raining, which showed that he was only trying to irritate me the more. But I took no notice, and went with him, saying nothing.
All that day we wandered round through the forest, each lost in his own thoughts. We shot nothing—lost one chance after another, through thinking of other things than sport. About noon, Glahn began walking a bit ahead of me, as if to give me a better chance of doing what I liked with him. He walked right across the muzzle of my gun; but I bore with that too. We came back that evening. Nothing had happened. I thought to myself: “Perhaps he'll be more careful now, and leave Maggie alone.”
“This has been the longest day of my life,” said Glahn when we got back to the hut.
Nothing more was said on either side.
The next few days he was in the blackest humor, seemingly all about the same letter. “I can't stand it; no, it's more than I can bear,” he would say sometimes in the night; we could hear it all through the hut. His ill temper carried him so far that he would not even answer the most friendly questions when our landlady spoke to him; and he used to groan in his sleep. He must have a deal on his conscience, I thought—but why in the name of goodness didn't he go home? Just pride, no doubt; he would not go back when he had been turned off once.
I met Maggie every evening, and Glahn talked with her no more. I noticed that she had given up chewing things altogether; she never chewed now. I was pleased at that, and thought: She's given up chewing things; that is one failing the less, and I love her twice as much as I did before!
One day she asked about Glahn—asked very cautiously. Was he not well? Had he gone away?
“If he's not dead, or gone away,” I said, “he's lying at home, no doubt. It's all one to me. He's beyond all bearing now.”
But just then, coming up to the hut, we saw Glahn lying on a mat on the ground, hands at the back of his neck, staring up at the sky.
“There he is,” I said.