His mother glanced toward him, and marked how he sat still, with the same sad, forgiving smile on his lips. No trace of anger or sign of resistance showed in his face; only a gentle, submissive sadness.
"Sven, you're never thinking of going with them?" cried his mother. "D'you know who he is, that man there? Olaus from Fårön, that helped to kill his newborn child—and left the woman to bear it all when she'd most need of him."
The men roared with laughter.
"Don't be afraid, Mor Thala," said Olaus. "We'll look after Sven all right. We'll salt and pepper it for him and make it nice. A snake's nothing to him after what he's been used to."
"Look there!" cried the mother again, pointing to the biggest and wildest-looking of the men. "That's Corfitzson from Fiskebäck. He's done a power of evil in his day—and 'twas him that set fire to a shed full of cattle, to get the insurance money."
"Never mind her talk, boy, you come along with us," said Corfitzson, laying a hand on Sven's shoulder.
But Mor Thala went on without a stop.
"And there's Bertil from Strömsundet. If you'd know the worst of him, he's only starved his grandmother to death. She lived just two months after he came into the house. And him there in the corner—that's Torsson from Iggenäs, that never sold a fish but what he stole from others' nets, and those two there that can hardly stand for the drink in them, that's Rasmussen and Hjelmfeldt. They drink up all their earnings and leave their wives and bairns to starve."
Her voice had risen almost to a shriek; she was quivering with rage and terror. Even the men shrank back a moment before her fury, and forgot to laugh.
"And that one there, behind all the rest," she went on, bitterly. "Can you see who that is? Your own brother, Ung-Joel, it is. He's done no more harm as yet than leaving his father and mother to perish for lack of a helping hand. The times I've begged and prayed of him to come out here and help us, but he'd never hear. There, lad, that's the men that have come to bid you go with them—but you won't; you can't...."