"She wished it so herself," said Lotta Hedman.
"Why, then, I beg pardon for tramping in like I did," said the man. "I'll have to be seeking Ruth somewhere else."
He was a little, withered man, with a dark skin and one shoulder constantly thrust up, which gave him a look of sullenness and discontent. Lotta remembered well that the last time he had been at the vicarage he had been rude and troublesome. But now, in the presence of sickness and death, he was quiet and humble.
To Lotta's great relief, he moved toward the door. But then he stopped. There before him lay a pair of wet, downtrodden boots.
"But—these are Ruth's," he said. "What does this mean?"
Lotta's resourcefulness was at an end. She could find nothing for it now but to tell him the truth.
Sigrun had reached beyond the church and cemetery of Algeröd, and was just crossing the bridge over the little stream when she heard Lotta Hedman's voice calling to her.
A moment later a sledge drew up beside her, and Lotta came forward and told her what had happened, telling her, at the same time, that the knife-grinder had promised to say nothing.
The man himself was sitting on the sledge, looking sullen and angry, but he spoke as calmly and peaceably as before.
"It's this way," he said. "I don't like the fashion of it, having Ruth put away and buried under another name. But I'll stick by what I've said for the rest. Young mistress can get up in the sledge here, and I'll drive her back to the vicarage, and nobody the wiser. I'll be as silent as a stone wall."