"Yes, it is true," said Sven Elversson. "We are ready to give you that money, if you confess. You understand that it is a matter of importance to us others that you should confess? Everyone in the district, perhaps in the whole country, is horrified. And we have resolved that you shall not go about the country asking for shelter of lonely folk if we can help it. That must not be. It is too great a temptation for a man like you. We want you imprisoned for life. We wish you no harm beyond that. We have no wish to take your life, or to hurt you at all, but we must have you in confinement. I and several others have watched you in court, and heard what you said. You are not exactly an intentional criminal, but you have fancies, and are easily frightened; you imagine that everyone is anxious to harm you. And if you think over it carefully, you will see that it is best for yourself that you should be shut up. You will be at peace then, and need have no fear of any one. I think, then, it would be better for you and for everyone else if you were to accept the five thousand kronor and confess."
"Not for a hundred thousand!" exclaimed the accused.
Sven Elversson had drawn gradually closer to the man while speaking, and sat down now on the bench beside him.
"Do not say that," he urged kindly, laying one hand on the other's sleeve. "Five thousand kronor is a good sum, and fully enough for the purpose for which you would use it. You cannot say otherwise. More would not be good for the one who is to have the money, and less would hardly do. Five thousand is as good as could be."
"I can't make you out," said the accused. "What do you think I should use it for? Who is the one I should give it to?"
"I am glad you asked me that," said Sven Elversson. "It was of that I wished to speak to you. There has been a great deal about you in the papers of late, and, among other things, how you are always asking after your daughter wherever you go. You were married, it seemed, before you committed that first murder two and twenty years ago, and on your release you tried at once to find out where your wife was. But she was dead. But you had a daughter—she would be a little over twenty now, and, as far as any one knows, she is alive, but no one could tell you where she had gone. And so you have been wandering about the country looking for her everywhere. As soon as you entered a house, the first thing you did was always to ask if any there knew anything of Julia Lamprecht. And"—here Sven lowered his voice and went on a little sadly—"it seemed to me that there was something I liked about that. There must be something good in a man who went about seeking for his daughter."
"But in the name of Heaven," cried the accused, "what have you to do with it all? Why are you here, talking to me like this? Can't you tell me what it is you want with me?"
"Thanks once more," said Sven Elversson in his gentlest voice, as if fearing to arouse the other's displeasure. "Those are just questions that I shall be only too glad to answer. I am from Grimön, as I said—a little island far out at sea, so far, at any rate, that I myself need have no fear of you, for you would hardly come there. But I have a mother who has warnings in her dreams at times. And on the morning of the thirteenth of February she asked me to go over to the mainland and see how things were with an old couple—relatives of ours—who lived in a little cottage among the stonehills, far from the high road, and with no neighbours near. She had dreamed something that made it seem best for someone to go and see how they were. And I did as she asked me. And so it came about that I was the first to discover what you had done that night. And I will not deny that it was a cruel sight, and ever since I have wished something could be done to prevent you from ever being free to go about again. And that is why I have been about collecting this money. I wish you no harm, do not think that. I have told you so already. I only want to see you imprisoned now for life."
As he spoke, he moved a little closer, and stroked the other's sleeve gently. He was evidently anxious that Lamprecht should not think he bore him any personal ill will. Had the man been a lion escaped from its cage, its keeper might have coaxed it back behind the bars in the same way.
It would be untrue to say that the accused did not regard him with uneasiness. Everyone filled him with uneasiness: judge and gaoler, magistrate and witnesses. But he could not help feeling that this Sven Elversson was little to be feared—he seemed, indeed, something weak in his mind. "One of those fellows that go about doing good," he told himself again. "Philanthropists, they call them."