"Yes, sir, and from the time he was a child he used to scribble things and call them his compositions. The pieces of paper always disappeared and I never knew what had become of them, but when his father was lying dead I found out where they were."
"And where were they?"
"In his poor father's hands."
Christian Christiansson had gone on and on, while the hot blood throbbed in his brain, struggling between the desire to reveal himself and the fear of doing so, but he was drawn up at last by a stifling sense of his own unworthiness, and before he knew what he was doing he said:
"The man who could do wrong to a father who loved him like that must have been a scoundrel--a bad-hearted scoundrel, and he deserved everything that happened to him."
"He was nothing of the kind, sir," said Anna. "He may have done wrong--I'm not defending him--but a better-hearted boy was never born into the world. Everybody loved him, and he loved everybody, and as for me----"
Christian Christiansson recovered himself at the sound of Anna's faltering words. "God bless her!" he thought, and his heart danced to a new song, but he only said, with a perceptible lowering of his voice, "I beg your pardon! Naturally his mother cannot think so, but this is the first time I've heard a good word for him since I came to Iceland."
"I hadn't meant to speak of him at all, sir. I never do when my other son is near--Hush! He is coming back."
But the noise which they heard behind them was that of the opening and closing of a bedroom not a kitchen door, and it was followed by the light footstep of a girl, whereupon Anna said:
"Elin! I thought you were in bed and asleep, my child."