Almost in the middle of the plain stood the church, from which the Grimön folk themselves had just, as it were, been driven out. It was an old-fashioned wooden building, that could not be called altogether ugly, for it had a slender little tower rising up boldly, and leading the mind heavenward. On the other hand, it was hardly beautiful, by reason of its dark, heavy nave, that weighed down the soul to earth.
And in the stone-walled enclosure about the church itself, a gray-striped cat wandered to and fro while the three stood without. A handsome animal, well marked, with close, fine fur, and a pleasant softness in all its movements.
But as they watched it, there seemed to be something uncanny about the way its limbs moved under the soft skin. It was not only that it moved so silently, or that its green slits of eyes, as it looked at them, were so veiled and without expression. The thing was hateful because it was so smooth and soft and pleasant-looking, while all the time it thought of nothing but stealing and killing.
And as they looked, the cat seemed to grow and stretch itself and expand, until it rose so high as to shut out sight of the wall of hills. And as the creature grew, it purred and hummed and made all manner of playful, easy movements—and the horror of it increased.
And they saw that the beast was the loathing that had arisen about them—the loathing that was to grow and grow till it spread over all the plain, that could find no better soil for its growth than here, shut in within narrow bounds, where all things were level, equable, even....
Mor Nathalia Elversson faced round toward the church, and, scraping with her nails at the red-painted wooden wall, tore loose a few splinters, which she laid between the leaves of her prayer book.
"Here in this church I was christened," she said, "when I was a week old. And here I was confirmed as a young girl. Here I was married, and here, like as not, they'll read the burial service over me. But, till that day comes, I'll enter there no more, as long as the shame of this day's left to endure."
[FATHER, MOTHER, AND SON]
AS THE two old people at Grimön came to know their stranger son, they wondered at him for many things.
"I tell you this, Joel," said Mor Elversson to her husband one day, "that if I'd been taken away and brought up amongst gentlefolks as one of themselves, and then all suddenly had to lay it all by, and come to live on such fare as we can give, after being used to all manner of dainties; if I'd had to leave all that and turn to helping you in the fields and never so much as time to read in a book, nor ever change a word with finer folks, but only a pair of ninnies like you and me—if it was me was come to that, I'd be sullen and hard from morning to night, that I would. And I doubt but you'd be the same."