“I was thinking about life. Here you walk at my side, strong and certain of victory as the young David. And yet a month ago you were part of the dregs of society!”
“Yes, that is really queer,” said Pelle, and he became thoughtful.
“But how did you get into such a mess? You could quite well have kept your head above water if you had only wanted to!”
“That I really don’t know. I tell you, it’s as if some one had hit you over the head; and then you run about and don’t know what you’re doing; and it isn’t so bad if you’ve once got there. You work and drink and bang each other over the head with your beer-cans or bottles—”
“You say that so contentedly—you don’t look behind things—that’s the point! I’ve seen so many people shipwrecked; for the poor man it’s only one little step aside, and he goes to the dogs; and he himself believes he’s a devilish fine fellow. But it was a piece of luck that you got out of it all! Yes, it’s a wonder remorse didn’t make your life bitter.”
“If we felt remorse we had brandy,” said Pelle, with an experienced air. “That soon drives out everything else.”
“Then it certainly has its good points—it helps a man over the time of waiting!”
“Do you really believe that an eternal kingdom is coming—the ‘thousand-year kingdom’—the millennium? With good times for all, for the poor and the miserable?”
Sort nodded. “God has promised it, and we must believe His Word. Something is being prepared over on the mainland, but whether it’s the real millennium, I don’t know.”
They tramped along. The road was stony and deserted. On either side the rocky cliffs, with their scrubby growth, were beginning to rise from the fields, and before them ranged the bluish rocky landscape of the heath or moorland. “As soon as we’ve been home, I shall travel; I must cross the sea and find out what they do really intend there,” said Pelle.