"Not if all the men in Bohuslen and Norway came together to be revenged upon your murderers would they be able to find them," said Torarin.
Then said Herr Arne: "If the living cannot help us, we must help ourselves."
With this Herr Arne began in a loud voice to say a paternoster, not in Norse but in Latin, as had been the use of the country before his time. And as he uttered each word of the prayer he pointed with his finger at one of those who sat with him at the table. He went through them all in this way many times, until he came to Amen. And as he spoke this word his finger pointed at the young maid who was his niece.
The young maid rose at once from the bench, and Herr Arne said to her: "You know what you have to do."
Then the young maiden lamented and said: "Do not send me upon this errand! It is too heavy a charge to lay upon so tender a maid as I."
"You shall assuredly go," said Herr Arne. "It is right that you go, since you have most to revenge. None of us has been robbed of so many years of life as you, who are the youngest among us."
"I desire not to be revenged on any man," said the maiden.
"You are to go at once," said Herr Arne. "And you will not be alone. You know that there are two among the living who sat with us here at table a week ago."
But when Torarin heard these words he thought they meant that Herr Arne charged him to contend with malefactors and murderers, and he cried out: "By the mercy of God I conjure you, Herr Arne—"
At that moment it seemed to Torarin that both Herr Arne and the parsonage vanished in a mist, and he himself sank down as though he had fallen from a giddy height, and with that he lost consciousness.