"Keep quiet, Larsson, you do not know all that Svidje Klas did," said Bertila angrily; "I say nothing about all the men that he and his people have killed and broken on the wheel. Do you remember Severin Sigfridson at Sorsankoski? He surrounded the peasants, and ordered his subaltern to behead them one by one; but he was not able to kill more than twenty-four, and asked the nobleman to finish the rest himself. The gentleman got angry, and ordered the peasants to cut the subaltern into five parts, and then do the same to each other as long as one remained alive."
"But what did you do, you mad brutes, on Peter Gumse's farm? Your men destroyed the place, broke the windows, slaughtered all the cattle, and set their severed heads with wide open mouths in the windows as a scare. Then the beams of the house were cut three parts through, so that when the folk came home it would fall upon their heads; and when you caught a horseman you used him as a target for your arrows."
"It is not worth while, Larsson, to try to take Svidje Klas' part. Do you remember when Axel Kurk's men came and killed a woman's children before her eyes? The poor mother could not stand this, she and her half-grown daughter seized the brute by the waist, hit him on the head with a pole, and pushed him fainting in the water. Svidje Klas then came and had that same woman cut in two."
"Loose talk, which has never been proven," replied Larsson gruffly.
"The dead keep silent like good children. The 5,000 killed at Ilmola do not speak."
"Instead of molesting the sergeant, you should have asked him for news about your son and mine," said Larsson, to get away from their usual contentious subject—the fatal Peasant War.
"Yes, you are right. I must hear more about the boys and the war. I am going to Vasa to-morrow."
"Will he soon return?" asked Meri in a shy voice.
"Gösta. He will take his own time," said the father angrily. "He has now became a nobleman; he is ashamed of his old father .... he blushes for a peasant's name."