Flinging down his riding-whip Magnus had taken a step forward and lifted his clinched fist into Oscar's quivering face when a cry came from the head of the staircase: "Magnus! Oscar! Magnus! Magnus!"
It was Anna. She ran down and put herself between the two men--the slight, lithe, figure and fair head of Oscar, and the burly form and swarthy face of Magnus, both panting hard and livid with rage and hate.
"My sons! My sons! For shame! For shame!" she cried. "Every word could be heard in the bedroom and Thora is crying her eyes out."
Magnus dropped his arm and fell aside a pace or two, rebuked and ashamed, but Oscar stood with an unflinching front where his mother had found him.
"Magnus--Oscar," continued Anna, "if you both love the poor girl who is lying helpless up-stairs, isn't that a reason why you should be friends and not enemies? And then think of me, my sons. I am your mother. Surely the sons of one mother can live at peace. I nursed you both when you were little ones and if there should be strife between you now, and blows and perhaps bloodshed, it would kill me--I could never survive it."
Then she turned toward Magnus and said, as well as she could for the tears that choked her:
"Magnus, you mustn't be angry with Oscar. He is your younger brother, remember. You and he slept in the same bed when you were children. And when he was a boy you used to carry him on your back and fight all his battles."
Magnus groaned and turned again until he stood sideways to his mother, and thinking he was not to be moved, she faced about to Oscar.
"Oscar," she said, "you must make peace with Magnus. You must, if only for Thora's sake. Remember, you have got her, Oscar, and if it is true that Magnus gave her up to you, although he loved her himself, think of the sacrifice he must have made for both of you! Perhaps he loves her still, and has condemned himself to life-long loneliness because he has lost her. And perhaps he weeps his heart out for her the long nights through. Love that suffers like that has a great excuse, Oscar. Doesn't it give him a right to look to Thora's happiness? And if he thinks she is suffering for want of her little Elin----"
Oscar's throat was hurting him, and in a husky voice he said, "She shall have the child back, mother. If the doctor says it is safe she shall have the child back immediately."