Stellan slowed down. They slipped under the lee of the hill beside a dilapidated old shed.
Another shot of welcome! This time the shot struck only a few yards to starboard. But it was impossible to discover who had fired it.
Laura cried out that she wanted to go back. Stellan looked as if he felt sick. He waved a handkerchief eagerly as a flag of truce. There were no more shots. The boat floated quietly in towards a tumbledown fishing pier. But still no living soul was visible.
Stellan had some trouble in getting Laura out of the saloon. Not that he had any illusions about Tord’s chivalry, but he felt safer all the same when he had her with him. Silent and hesitating they went ashore, still with the reports of the shots on their nerves. They passed through an old field which was now running wild and full of little shoots of birches and aspens, then they cut across a little garden quite overgrown with pestilence weed out of which a few half suffocated black currant bushes stretched up their arms like drowning people, whilst the poor naked apple trees writhed in grey despair in front of a rotting cottage wall with broken windows and grass-grown porch. Nature crept in over the work of man and began to resume its power. Over the whole there lay, in the gloomy autumn day, an indescribable odour of dampness, decay and dismal neglect.
Shivering, Laura and Stellan took the path up the hill. Up there, whipped by the winds, the big house lay with its weathered logs, surrounded by a litter of empty tins and broken bottles.
Nobody came out when Stellan knocked. The door was not locked and they walked in. The big hall was cold, dirty and filled with a strange smell of animals. The whole house shook in the gale, and on the windows towards the north a pine branch knocked persistently as if the wind wished to enter as a guest.
They cautiously penetrated further. On one of the folding beds in the bedroom something lay huddled up under a reindeer skin. It moved when Laura lifted the fur rug and an untidy head peeped out. It was Dagmar. She stared in dull amazement at the visitors, without recognizing them.
“I am Laura ... Laura Selamb ... and this is Stellan.”
“Oh, I see, it’s you....”
Dagmar crept down. She was dressed in some grey rags. She had the grey complexion of the really poor, she looked emaciated, worn out. She gave at the same time the horrible and pitiful impression of a starved and tormented woman. She shook herself, and her teeth chattered: