When the last of the "Laura's" three bells were ringing, Magnus stood alone on the little wooden jetty going down to the bay. The whistle screamed in the steam-pipe, the anchor-chain rattled in the hawse-holes, and the steamer turned her head to the sea.
Then a row-boat came back from the vessel's side, bringing an elderly lady who was trying to hide her tear-stained face from the gaze of the boatmen and even the eyes of the night, behind the folds of a little lace shawl which she wore over her hufa. It was Anna, and as Magnus helped her ashore, she said:
"Give me your arm and take me home--I'm not feeling well to-night, Magnus."
But before they had gone many paces she stopped and looked back lovingly at the ship that was now steaming down the fiord, and said in a pitiful voice:
"He is gone and I have lost him! My poor boy! My poor Oscar! I had him for six and twenty years and to think it should come to this!"
She walked a few more paces and then looked back again, and said:
"I have never seen anybody so deeply affected. 'Oh, mother, mother!' he cried at last--just like a child. I could have fancied the years had rolled back and he was still a boy--feeling ill and helpless and wanting to lie in his mother's lap."
Again she walked a few steps and looked back as before.
"There was nobody to see him off--nobody at all. The story must have leaked out somewhere, and of all the people he used to call his friends there was not one to say farewell. My poor boy! My poor Oscar! He did wrong--very wrong--but God knows how he is suffering. We think we punish people when we put them in prison, but what punishment is like the pain of an awakened conscience? And Oscar is leaving everything behind him--everything and everybody--and going away in disgrace."
Once more she walked a few steps and then she said in the voice of a crying child: