“Are they really?” asked Lasse, in surprise. “Well, I don’t complain as far as the food’s concerned; but there’s a little too much for us two to do, and then it’s so miserable to hear that woman crying nearly the whole time. I wonder if he ill-treats her; they say not.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t,” said Kalle. “Even if he wanted to—as you can very well understand he might—he dursn’t. He’s afraid of her, for she’s possessed by a devil, you know.”
“They say she’s a were-wolf at night,” said Lasse, looking as if he expected to see a ghost in one of the corners.
“She’s a poor body, who has her own troubles,” said Maria, “and every woman knows a little what that means. And the farmer’s not all kindness either, even if he doesn’t beat her. She feels his unfaithfulness more than she’d feel anything else.”
“Oh, you wives always take one another’s part,” said Kalle, “but other people have eyes too. What do you say, grandmother? You know that better than any one else.”
“Well, I know something about it at any rate,” said the old woman. “I remember the time when Kongstrup came to the island as well as if it had been yesterday. He owned nothing more than the clothes he wore, but he was a fine gentleman for all that, and lived in Copenhagen.”
“What did he want over here?” asked Lasse.
“What did he want? To look for a young girl with money, I suppose. He wandered about on the heath here with his gun, but it wasn’t foxes he was after. She was fooling about on the heath too, admiring the wild scenery, and nonsense like that, and behaving half like a man, instead of being kept at home and taught to spin and make porridge; but she was the only daughter, and was allowed to go on just as she liked. And then she meets this spark from the town, and they become friends. He was a curate or a pope, or something of the sort, so you can’t wonder that the silly girl didn’t know what she was doing.”
“No, indeed!” said Lasse.
“There’s always been something all wrong with the women of that family,” the old woman continued. “They say one of them once gave herself to Satan, and since then he’s had a claim upon them and ill-treats them whenever the moon’s waning, whether they like it or not. He has no power over the pure, of course; but when these two had got to know one another, things went wrong with her too. He must have noticed it, and tried to get off, for they said that the old farmer of Stone Farm compelled him with his gun to take her for his wife; and he was a hard old dog, who’d have shot a man down as soon as look at him. But he was a peasant through and through, who wore home-woven clothes, and wasn’t afraid of working from sunrise to sunset. It wasn’t like what it is now, with debts and drinking and card-playing, so people had something then.”