“I mind me one time when I was little—four winters old I was then—I had run away from home into the woods. I lost myself, and wandered about many days and nights—My mother was with the folks that found me, and when she caught me up in her arms, I mind me well, she bit me in my neck. I thought it was that she was angry with me—but afterward I knew better—
“I long, myself, now, to be home out of this forest. It is written: forsake ye all things and follow me—but there has been all too much in this world that I had no mind to forsake—”
“You, Father?” said Kristin. “Ever have I heard all men say that you have been a pattern for pure life and poverty and humbleness—”
The monk laughed slily.
“Aye, a young child like you thinks, maybe, there are no other lures in the world than pleasure and riches and power. But I say to you, these are small things men find by the wayside; and I—I have loved the ways themselves—not the small things of the world did I love, but the whole world. God gave me grace to love Lady Poverty and Lady Chastity from my youth up, and thus methought with these playfellows it was safe to wander, and so I have roved and wandered, and would have been fain to roam over all the ways of the earth. And my heart and my thoughts have roamed and wandered too—I fear me I have often gone astray in my thoughts on the most hidden things. But now ’tis all over, little Kristin; I will home now to my house and lay aside all my own thoughts, and hearken to the clear words of the Gardian telling what I should believe and think concerning my sin and the mercy of God—”
A little while after he dropped asleep. Kristin went and sat by the hearth tending the fire. But well on in the morning, when she was nigh dozing off herself, of a sudden Brother Edwin spoke from the bed:
“Glad am I, Kristin, that this matter of you and Erlend Nikulaussön is brought to a good end.”
Kristin burst out weeping:
“We have done so much wrong before we came so far. And what gnaws at my heart most is that I have brought my father so much sorrow. He has no joy in this wedding either. And even so he knows not—did he know all—I trow he would take his kindness quite from me.”
“Kristin,” said Brother Edwin gently, “see you not, child, that ’tis therefore you must keep it from him, and ’tis therefore you must give him no more cause of sorrow—because he never will call on you to pay the penalty. Nothing you could do could turn your father’s heart from you.”