‘Job gave way—this one was more unfortunate.’
‘Facts, dry facts.’
‘He kept silent’, the advocate went on, ‘even when his mother died and he was given a stepmother at thirteen years old—a serpent, a vixen.’
‘Can they mean me after all?’ thought Bontzye.
‘No insinuations against a third party’, said the president, angrily.
‘She grudged him every mouthful—stale, mouldy bread, tendons instead of meat—and she drank coffee with cream.’
‘Keep to the subject’, ordered the president.
‘She grudged him everything but her finger-nails, and his black and blue body showed through the holes in his torn and fusty clothes. Winter time, in the hardest frost, he had to chop wood for her, barefoot in the yard; and his hands were too young and too weak, the logs too thick, the hatchet too blunt. But he kept silent, even to his father.’
‘To that drunkard?’ laughs the accuser, and Bontzye feels cold in every limb.
‘And always alone’, he continued; ‘no playmates, no school, nor teaching of any kind—never a whole garment—never a free moment.’