"Eh, Joel, Joel," she thought. "Always strange in his ways. He's shown me now what I am; made me see what I really feel. I know now, that for all the boy's been away from us all these years, and come back in disgrace, I can't but love him all the same."
And, without a word to the Pastor, she stepped forward to her son and bade him welcome, her husband watching her anxiously the while.
"Surely," she said, in her gentlest voice, "it was just for this that the trouble came—that Joel and I might have you back again."
[IN GOD'S HOUSE]
SVEN ELVERSSON, the man who had been greeted as a son by the two old folk at Grimön, sat in the church at Applum, thanking God that he had found a place of refuge where he was not looked upon with horror and disgust.
On the lonely, rocky little island with its two poor inhabitants, he had no fear of encountering that downward curve of the lips that signified loathing. His father was an old man, and felt no disgust toward him, having no strong feelings any longer in that way. His mother was sensitive as ever, but she loved him.
The church in which he sat was an old wooden building, the ceiling decorated with a great picture of the Judgment. And every time he looked up he found himself involuntarily gazing at a big, black, grinning devil, who was thrusting fuel under a cauldron filled with sinners boiling in a sulphurous broth. Sven Elversson knew that particular fiend of old, from the time when he had been in that very church seventeen years before. A striking feature was the long tail, cloven in three at the tip, which he used with great dexterity to stir the boiling mess.
As a child he had often let his fancy play about the figure of this master cook, who managed so skilfully to tend his fire and his pot at the same time. Now, however, other thoughts were in his mind. If all those who every Sunday looked up at that merry spirit of the infernal kitchens at his boiling were suddenly told that there, in their midst, sat one of their fellows who had actually tasted human flesh, they would hardly let him remain there long.
There was one thing—he could find no other to compare with it—which civilised human beings could not do. Murder, adultery, cruelty, theft; these they could commit. They were not above such things as drunkenness, rape, treason, espionage. Such things as these were of daily occurrence. There were, no doubt, those who would shrink from any such crime, but the things were done. One of mankind's ancient sins there was which no longer existed in civilized countries—a thing too loathsome for any to contemplate. And that he had done. Yes, he was more to be abhorred than any fiend.
The only soul in the church, beyond his parents, who knew the reason of Sven Elversson's homecoming was the Priest. But the Pastor had received him kindly on the previous Sunday, showed him sympathy, and spoken with his father; had gone with him out to Grimön, and been pleased to see his mother's affectionate welcome—and had approved the idea of his remaining at home with his parents. The Priest had shown himself throughout as a tolerant and generous man.