"The man answered at once:
"'That's right. Rhånge he calls himself. It's just Hånger spelt round another way. He's the Pastor at Applum in Bohuslän, and just married, so I've heard, a daughter of the priest at Stenbroträsk.'"
The listener in the corner gave a sudden start.
"Well, now, I don't mean one should always go by such old stories," said Lotta Hedman. "But there might be something in this after all, and perhaps it was wrong of me not to have gone with Sigrun to Bohuslän after I had heard all this. And perhaps that's why everything has gone wrong with me since. For though I've got back my seeing and hearing again, there's none will ever listen to what I say, and perhaps that's because I failed in my duty to Sigrun. And would it be right now?"
She broke off; her face, that had been alive with feeling, stiffened and hardened all at once.
"I can see something," she said. "Ice and snow, all white. And a tent—a black tent—and a long sledge...."
The train entered a station. Lotta Hedman's fellow traveller rose hurriedly from his seat and reached up for his luggage on the rack.
Lotta Hedman did not heed; she was full of the vision that had come to her.
The man had left the train, and was moving across the platform when he heard Lotta's voice calling him back. But he went on without turning round.
Lotta pulled at the strap of the window with all her might, but by the time she had opened it, the man had disappeared.