“Oh, I fear I must do as they wish at home,” she wept. And now weeping came upon Arne too.
“You know not, Kristin, how dear you are to me.” He hid his face upon her shoulder. “If you did, and if you cared for me, for sure you would go to Lavrans and beg hard—”
“I cannot do it,” she sobbed. “I could never come to love any man so much as to go against my father and mother for his sake.” She groped with her hands for his face under the hood and the heavy steel cap. “Do not cry so, Arne, my dearest friend—”
“You must take this at least,” said he after a time, giving her a little brooch; “and think of me sometimes, for I shall never forget you nor my grief—”
It was all dark when Kristin and Arne had said their last farewell. She stood and looked after him when at length he rode away. A streak of yellow light shone through a rift in the clouds, and was reflected in the footprints, where they had walked and stood in the slush on the road—it all looked so cold and sorrowful, she thought. She drew up her linen neckerchief and dried her tear-stained face, then turned and went homeward.
She was wet and cold and walked quickly. After a time she heard someone coming along the road behind her. She was a little frightened; even on such a night as this there might be strange folk journeying on the highway, and she had a lonely stretch before her. A great black scree rose right up on one side, and on the other the ground fell steeply and there was fir-forest all the way down to the leaden-hued river in the bottom of the dale. So she was glad when the man behind her called to her by name; and she stood still and waited.
The newcomer was a tall, thin man in a dark surcoat with lighter sleeves—as he came nearer she saw he was dressed as a priest and carried an empty wallet on his back. And now she knew him to be Bentein Priestson, as they called him—Sira Eirik’s daughter’s son. She saw at once that he was far gone in drink.
“Aye, one goes and another comes,” said he, laughing, when they had greeted one another. “I met Arne of Brekken even now—I see you are weeping. You might as well smile a little now I am come home—we have been friends too ever since we were children, have we not?”
“’Tis an ill exchange, methinks, getting you into the parish in his stead,” said Kristin, bluntly. She had never liked Bentein. “And so, I fear, will many think. Your grandfather here has been so glad you were in Oslo making such a fair beginning.”
“Oh, aye,” said Bentein, with a nickering laugh. “So ’twas a fair beginning I was making, you think? I was even like a pig in a wheat-field, Kristin—and the end was the same, I was hunted out with cudgels and the hue and cry. Aye, aye; aye, aye. ’Tis no great thing, the gladness my grandfather gets from his offspring. But what a mighty hurry you are in!”