Ragnfrid showed all the guests of honour to their places, and bade them good-night. Her husband, who should have helped her in this, was nowhere to be seen.
The dark courtyard was empty, save for a few small groups of young folks—servants most of them—when at last she stole out to find her husband and bring him with her to his bed. She had seen as the night wore on that he had grown very drunken.
She stumbled over him at last, as she crept along in her search outside the cattle-yard—he was lying in the grass behind the bath-house, on his face.
Groping in the darkness, she touched him with her hand—aye, it was he. She thought he was asleep, and took him by the shoulder—she must get him up off the icy-cold ground. But he was not asleep, at least, not wholly.
“What would you?” he asked, in a thick voice.
“You cannot lie here,” said his wife. She held him up, as he stood swaying. With one hand she brushed the soil off his velvet robe. “’Tis time we too went to rest, husband.” She took him by the arm, and drew him, reeling, up towards the farm-yard buildings.
“You looked not up, Ragnfrid, when you sat in the bridal bed beneath the crown,” he said in the same voice. “Our daughter—she was not so shamefast—her eyes were not shamefast when she looked upon her bridegroom.”
“She has waited for him seven half-years,” said the mother in a low voice. “No marvel if she found courage to look up—”
“Nay, devil damn me if they have waited!” screamed the man—as his wife strove fearfully to hush him.
They were in the narrow passage between the back of the privy and a fence. Lavrans smote with his clenched fist on the beam across the cess-pit: