"Niels! Niels!" I cried from out the horror of my soul, "you have a monstrous black sin upon your conscience! For your sake that unfortunate man fell by the ax of the executioner!"
The bread and the crutch fell from his hand, and he himself was near to falling into the fire. "May God forgive you, Morten!" he groaned. "God knows I didn't mean anything like that. May my sin be forgiven me! But surely you only mean to frighten me! I come from far away, and have heard nothing. No one but you, reverend father, has recognized me. I have told my name to no one. When I asked them in Veilbye if the rector was still there, they said that he was."
"That is the new rector," I replied. "Not he whom you and your sinful brother have slain."
He wrung his hands and cried aloud, and then I knew that he had been but a tool in the hands of that devil, Morten. Therefore I set to work to comfort him, and took him into my study that he might calm himself sufficiently to tell me the detail of this Satan's work.
This was the story as he tells it: His brother Morten—truly a son of Belial—cherished a deadly hatred toward pastor Sören Quist since the day the latter had refused him the hand of his daughter. As soon as he heard that the pastor's coachman had left him, he persuaded Niels to take the place.
"Watch your chance well," he had said, "we'll play the black coat a trick some day, and you will be no loser by it."
Niels, who was rough and defiant by nature, soon came to a quarrel with his master, and when he had received his first chastisement, he ran at once to Ingvorstrup to report it. "Let him strike you just once again," said Morten. "Then come to me, and we will pay him for it."
Then came the quarrel in the garden, and Niels ran off to Ingvorstrup.
He met his brother in the woods and told him what had occurred.
"Did anyone see you on the way here?" asked Morten.
Niels thought not. "Good," said Morten; "now we'll give him a fright that he will not forget for a week or so."