The first to disturb the silence was Anne Sophie, who sprang with a cry from her chair, stumbled, and fell into the schoolmaster's arms.
The entranced company, who were still at Lützen, were as much disturbed by this interruption as if Isolani's Croats had suddenly broken into the room. The postmaster, still in the midst of the battle, sprang up and trod heavily upon old grandma's sore foot with his iron heel. The schoolmaster was quite upset, not at all realising the value of the burden in his arms—perhaps the first and also the prettiest in his whole life; the children fled in all directions, and some crept behind the surgeon's high chair. But Andreas, who had just followed the Finnish cavalry in their charge over the trenches, seized the surgeon's silver-headed Spanish cane, and prepared to receive the Croats at the point of the bayonet. Old Bäck was undisturbed; he produced his tobacco box, bit off a piece, and mildly said, "What is the matter with you, Anne Sophie?" The latter freed herself, blushing and embarrassed, from the schoolmaster's arms, and declaring that someone had pricked her with a pin, looked around for the culprit.
Old grandma, always quick to scent out mischief, immediately practised a method, and discovered that Jonathan had inserted a pin at the top of his rattan, and therewith upset his eldest sister, with the results just indicated. The punishment, like that under martial law, was quick and short, and Jonathan had then to retire to the nursery, and learn an extra lesson for the next day.
When the principal power had thus restored order without bloodshed, the company began to talk of the surgeon's story.
"It is too violent a tale, my dear cousin," said the old grandmother, whilst looking at the teller with one of those mild and speaking glances, which captured all hearts with their expression of intelligence and sympathy; "altogether too turbulent. It seems to me that I still hear the noise of the cannon. War is frightful and detestable, when we consider all the blood shed on the battlefield, and all the tears at home. When will the day arrive when men, instead of destroying each other, will share the earth and our Lord's good gifts together in Harmony and Universal Brotherhood?"
Now the postmaster's martial spirit rose in arms.
"Peace? Share? No war? Pshaw! cousin, pshaw! would you make an ant's nest of the world? What a state of things! Scribblers would smother everything with ink; cowards and petty tyrants would sit on honest men; and when one nation domineered over another, people would lowly bow, thank them, and act like sheep. No; the devil take me! men like Gustaf Adolf and Napoleon move nations and things; they tap a little blood which has been spoilt by gross living, and then the world improves. I still remember the 21st of August, at Karstula; Fieandt stood on the left, and I at the right——"
"If I may interrupt the speech of my honoured brother," said the schoolmaster, who had heard this story one hundred and seventy times before, "I would prove that the world would progress much better through spilling ink than blood. Inter arma silent leges. In war times we could not sit here by the fire, and drink our toddy in Bäck's room; we should be serving a cannon on the ramparts; linstock in hand, instead of a glass; powder in our pouches, and not even a pinch of snuff. Ink has made you, brother, a postmaster; in ink you live and have your being; ink brings your daily bread, and what would you be with blood alone, and no ink, may I ask?
"What should I be? Devils and heretics ... I?"
"Cousin Svanholm!" said the old grandmother, with a warning glance at the children.