At intervals Elin came to him also. She was a tall girl now, nearly sixteen years of age, with a whisper of womanhood in her face and form, but coming in her short blue skirt and buckled shoes she would slide into a seat on Magnus's knee and, slipping one arm about his neck, put the other hand on his hot forehead, and try to soothe him in her motherly little way.
But "There, there! That will do. Go to your grandmother. I'm tired," he would say.
Early in the day he had been tormented by thoughts of the travelers who might come from a distance to stay over-night in order to be present at the auction, and in his mind's eye he saw the Inn-farm full of them, with their indifferent talk and heartless laughter, and himself in his impotent rage itching with a desire to fling them into the road. But when the storm broke his fears on that head were appeased, and while the wind and snow wailed and wept about the house he sat for hours alone in a gloomy and tragic pence.
Besides the Sheriff, the only person who visited the house that day was the Pastor, and he came as late as ten at night to take the Sheriff back to lodge with him. By that time all that was left of the broken household had gathered in the hall, where Magnus still sat before the stove, while the Sheriff, with Anna and Elin, stood by the dresser making an end of the inventory.
"Ugh! What a night!" said the Pastor, stamping the snow off his stockings. "You're not likely to be brought out of bed by travelers on a night like this--that's some consolation, isn't it?"
He was a garrulous old man, with a shallow heart and a shallow head, who chewed the cud of his humdrum livelihood with content on his stipend of fifty pounds a year.
"So this is to be your last night in the old home, Anna! What a pity! Well," tapping his snuff-box, "naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither! Blessed be the name of the Lord!"
Magnus moved his chair impatiently and made contemptuous noises in his throat.
"I've known the old house through all its days of joy and sorrow for forty-five years, Anna. Ever since your poor father that's dead--I buried him myself, God rest his soul!----"
"God rest his soul," said Anna.