Alma was the first to step ashore. With a hurried nod to her companions she moved off swiftly towards her home.
"Now pull for town—pull, Nono!" said Pelle, with unusual energy, taking up himself the oars that Alma had laid down.
Pull they did, tired as were Nono's young arms, and feeble as were Pelle's. The distance was short by water, and the two were soon at the magistrate's office, where Pelle expected to find the delinquent boys. They were already there. Their wet clothes had been changed, and they were for the moment in private conversation with the colonel, who had been summoned immediately on their arrival.
In the pocket of the dripping coat that had been worn by Frans a bundle of the missing bank-notes had been found, carelessly rolled in a bit of yellow wrapping-paper. This all the by-standers about the door had heard, for the proceedings at the country seat of justice seem to be considered to belong to the small public of the neighbourhood.
While Pelle was waiting without, Nono having been sent back at once with the boat, the colonel was holding Frans by the hand, and talking to him from the depths of his stirred paternal heart.
"I have you, Frans, as one alive from the dead, and so I must talk to you," said the colonel solemnly. "Don't answer me; don't speak a word, Frans!—And you, boy," and he turned towards Knut, "keep quiet. No excuses; no explanations from either of you!—I want to say to you, Frans, what I should have longed to say to you if you had sunk in that deep water. I have not watched over you as I should, my boy. I take my share in the blame of what you have done. I have been too wrapped up in my own sorrows, my own ill-health, and my own melancholy reflections, to be to you what I ought to have been. I find I love you most intensely, and your loss would have been a terrible blow to me. Your bright face gone for ever from the home would have made it dreary indeed. You have caused me great sorrow by running away, and have, I fear, been guilty of that for which the law must punish you."
Frans admonished.
Frans stirred as if about to speak.