he felt the wind of their flight, and turning about with a tiny
clapping sound. He felt a most painful desire to cry.

Among the tall currant-bushes yonder something moved, and Sjermanna’s
head made its appearance. She was moving cautiously and peering before
her. When she saw Pelle she came quickly forward.

“Good evening!” she whispered.

“Good evening!” he answered aloud, delighted to return to human
society.

“Hush! You mustn’t shout!” she said peremptorily.

“Why not?” Pelle himself was whispering now. He was feeling quite
concerned. “Because you mustn’t! Donkey! Come, I’ll show you something.
No, nearer still!”

Pelle pushed his head forward through the tall elder-bush, and suddenly
she put her two hands about his head and kissed him violently and
pushed him back. He tried gropingly to take hold of her, but she stood
there laughing at him. Her face glowed in the darkness. “You haven’t
heard anything about it!” she whispered. “Come, I’ll tell you!”

Now he was smiling all over his face. He pushed his way eagerly into
the elder-bush. But at the same moment he felt her clenched fist strike
his face. She laughed crazily, but he stood fixed in the same position,
as though stunned, his mouth held forward as if still awaiting a kiss.
“Why do you hit me?” he asked, gazing at her brokenly.

“Because I can’t endure you! You’re a perfect oaf, and so ugly and so
common!”

“I have never done anything to you!”

“No? Anyhow, you richly deserved it! What did you want to kiss me for?”

Pelle stood there helplessly stammering. The whole world of his
experience collapsed under him. “But I didn’t!” he at last brought out;
he looked extraordinarily foolish. Manna aped his expression. “Ugh!
Bugh! Take care, or you’ll freeze to the ground and turn into a
lamp-post! There’s nothing on the hedge here that will throw light on
your understanding!”

With a leap Pelle was over the hedge. Manna took him hastily by the
hand and drew him through the bushes. “Aina and Dolores will be here
directly. Then we’ll play,” she declared.

“I thought they couldn’t come out in the evenings any more,” said
Pelle, obediently allowing her to lead him. She made no reply, but
looked about her as though she wanted to treat him to something as in
the old days. In her need she stripped a handful of leaves off the
currant-boughs, and stuffed them into his mouth. “There, take that and
hold your mouth!” She was quite the old Manna once more, and Pelle
laughed.

They had come to the summer-house. Manna cooled his swollen cheeks with
wet earth while they waited.

“Did it hurt you much?” she asked sympathetically, putting her arm
about his shoulder.

“It’s nothing. What’s a box on the ear?” he said manfully.

“I didn’t mean it—you know that. Did _that_ hurt you very much?”

Pelle gazed at her sadly. She looked at him inquisitively. “Was it
here?” she said, letting her hand slide down his back. He rose
silently, in order to go, but she seized him by the wrist. “Forgive
me,” she whispered.

“Aren’t the others coming soon?” asked Pelle harshly. He proposed to be
angry with her, as in the old days.

“No! They aren’t coming at all! I’ve deceived you. I wanted to talk to
you!” Manna was gasping for breath.

“I thought you didn’t want to have anything more to do with me?”

“Well, I don’t! I only want—” She could not find words, and stamped
angrily on the ground. Then she said slowly and solemnly, with the
earnestness of a child: “Do you know what I believe? I believe—I love
you!”

“Then we can get married when we are old enough!” said Pelle joyfully.

She looked at him for a moment with a measuring glance. The town-hall
and the flogging! thought Pelle. He was quite resolved that he would do
the beating now; but here she laughed at him. “What a glorious booby
you are!” she said, and as though deep in thought, she let a handful of
wet earth run down his neck.

Pelle thought for a moment of revenge; then, as though in sport, he
thrust his hand into her bosom. She fell back weakly, groping
submissively with her hands; a new knowledge arose in him, and impelled
him to embrace her violently.

She looked at him in amazement, and tried gently to push his hand away.
But it was too late. The boy had broken down her defences.

As Pelle went back into the house he was overwhelmed, but not happy.
His heart hammered wildly, and a chaos reigned in his brain. Quite
instinctively he trod very softly. For a long time he lay tossing to
and fro without being able to sleep. His mind had resolved the enigma,
and now he discovered the living blood in himself. It sang its
sufferings in his ear; it welled into his cheeks and his heart; it
murmured everywhere in numberless pulses, so that his whole body
thrilled. Mighty and full of mystery, it surged through him like an
inundation, filling him with a warm, deep astonishment. Never before
had he known all this!

In the time that followed his blood was his secret confidant in
everything; he felt it like a caress when it filled his limbs, causing
a feeling of distension in wrists and throat. He had his secret now,
and his face never betrayed the fact that he had ever known Sjermanna.
His radiant days had all at once changed into radiant nights. He was
still enough of a child to long for the old days, with their games in
the broad light of day; but something impelled him to look forward,
listening, and his questing soul bowed itself before the mysteries of
life. The night had made him accomplice in her mysteries. With Manna he
never spoke again. She never came into the garden, and if he met her
she turned into another street. A rosy flame lay continually over her
face, as though it had burned its way in. Soon afterward she went to a
farm in Ostland, where an uncle of hers lived.

But Pelle felt nothing and was in no way dejected. He went about as
though in a half-slumber; everything was blurred and veiled before his
spiritual vision. He was quite bewildered by all that was going on
within him. Something was hammering and laboring in every part and
corner of him. Ideas which were too fragile were broken down and built
up more strongly, so that they should bear the weight of the man in
him. His limbs grew harder; his muscles became like steel, and he was
conscious of a general feeling of breadth across his back, and of
unapplied strength. At times he awakened out of his half-slumber into a
brief amazement, when he felt himself, in one particular or another, to
have become a man; as when one day he heard his own voice. It had
gained a deep resonance, which was quite foreign to his ear, and forced
him to listen as though it had been another that spoke.

XVIII

Pelle fought against the decline of the business. A new apprentice had
been taken into the workshop, but Pelle, as before, had to do all the
delicate jobs. He borrowed articles when necessary, and bought things
on credit; and he had to interview impatient customers, and endeavor to
pacify them. He got plenty of exercise, but he learned nothing
properly. “Just run down to the harbor,” the master used to say:
“Perhaps there will be some work to bring back!” But the master was
much more interested in the news which he brought thence.

Pelle would also go thither without having received any orders.
Everybody in the town must needs make for the harbor whenever he went
from home; it was the heart through which everything came and went,
money and dreams and desires and that which gratified them. Every man
had been to sea, and his best memories and his hardest battles belonged
to the sea. Dreams took the outward way; yonder lay the sea, and all
men’s thoughts were drawn to it; the thoughts of the young, who longed
to go forth and seek adventure, and of the old, who lived on their
memories. It was the song in all men’s hearts, and the God in the
inmost soul of all; the roving-ground of life’s surplus, the home of
all that was inexplicable and mystical. The sea had drunk the blood of
thousands, but its color knew no change; the riddle of life brooded in
its restless waters.

Destiny rose from the floor of the deep and with short shrift set her
mark upon a man; he might escape to the land, like Baker Jörgensen, who
went no more to sea when once the warning had come to him, or, like
Boatman Jensen, he might rise in his sleep and walk straight over the
vessel’s side. Down below, where the drowned dwelt, the ships sank to
bring them what they needed; and from time to time the bloodless
children of the sea rose to the shore, to play with the children that
were born on a Sunday, and to bring them death or happiness.

Over the sea, three times a week, came the steamer with news from
Copenhagen; and vessels all wrapped in ice, and others that had sprung
a heavy leak, or bore dead bodies on board; and great ships which came
from warm countries and had real negroes among their crews.

Down by the harbor stood the old men who had forsaken the sea, and now
all the long day through they stared out over the playground of their
manhood, until Death came for them. The sea had blown gout into their
limbs, had buffeted them until they were bent and bowed, and in the
winter nights one could hear them roar with the pain like wild beasts.
Down to the harbor drifted all the flotsam and jetsam of the land,
invalids and idle men and dying men, and busy folk raced round about
and up and down with fluttering coat-tails, in order to scent out
possible profits.

The young sported here continually; it was as though they encountered
the future when they played here by the open sea. Many never went
further, but many let themselves be caught and whirled away out into
the unknown. Of these was Nilen. When the ships were being fitted out
he could wait no longer. He sacrificed two years’ apprenticeship, and
ran away on board a vessel which was starting on a long voyage. Now he
was far away in the Trades, on the southern passage round America,
homeward bound with a cargo of redwood. And a few left with every
steamer. The girls were the most courageous when it came to cutting
themselves loose; they steamed away swiftly, and the young men followed
them in amorous blindness. And men fought their way outward in order to
seek something more profitable than could be found at home.

Pelle had experienced all this already: he had felt this same longing,
and had known the attractive force of the unknown. Up in the country
districts it was the dream of all poor people to fight their way to
town, and the boldest one day ventured thither, with burning cheeks,
while the old people spoke warningly of the immorality of cities. And
in the town here it was the dream of all to go to the capital, to
Copenhagen; there fortune and happiness were to be found! He who had
the courage hung one day over the ship’s rail, and waved farewell, with
an absent expression in his eyes, as though he had been playing a game
with high stakes; over there on the mainland he would have to be a
match with the best of them. But the old people shook their heads and
spoke at length of the temptations and immorality of the capital.

Now and again one came back and justified their wisdom. Then they would
run delightedly from door to door. “Didn’t we tell you so?” But many
came home at holiday seasons and were such swells that it was really
the limit! And this or that girl was so extremely stylish that people
had to ask the opinion of Wooden-leg Larsen about her.

The girls who got married over there—well, they were well provided for!
After an interval of many years they came back to their parents’ homes,
travelling on deck among the cattle, and giving the stewardess a few
pence to have them put in the newspaper as cabin-passengers. They were
fine enough as to their clothes, but their thin haggard faces told
another story. “There is certainly not enough to eat for all over
there!” said the old women.

But Pelle took no interest in those that came home again. All his
thoughts were with those who went away; his heart tugged painfully in
his breast, so powerful was his longing to be off. The sea, whether it
lay idle or seethed with anger, continually filled his head with the
humming of the world “over yonder,” with a vague, mysterious song of
happiness.

One day, as he was on his way to the harbor, he met old thatcher Holm
from Stone Farm. Holm was going about looking at the houses from top to
bottom; he was raising his feet quite high in the air from sheer
astonishment, and was chattering to himself. On his arm he carried a
basket loaded with bread and butter, brandy, and beer.

“Well, here’s some one at last!” he said, and offered his hand. “I’m
going round and wondering to myself where they all live, those that
come here day after day and year after year, and whether they’ve done
any good. Mother and I have often talked about it, that it would be
splendid to know how things have turned out for this one or that. And
this morning she said it would be best if I were to make a short job of
it before I quite forget how to find my way about the streets here, I
haven’t been here for ten years. Well, according to what I’ve seen so
far, mother and I needn’t regret we’ve stayed at home. Nothing grows
here except lamp-posts, and mother wouldn’t understand anything about
rearing them. Thatched roofs I’ve not seen here. Here in the town
they’d grudge a thatcher his bread. But I’ll see the harbor before I go
home.”

“Then we’ll go together,” said Pelle. He was glad to meet some one from
his home. The country round about Stone Farm was always for him the
home of his childhood. He gossiped with the old man and pointed out
various objects of interest.

“Yes, I’ve been once, twice, three times before this to the harbor,”
said Holm, “but I’ve never managed to see the steamer. They tell me
wonderful things of it; they say all our crops are taken to Copenhagen
in the steamer nowadays.”

“It’s lying here to-day,” said Pelle eagerly. “This evening it goes
out.”

Holm’s eyes beamed. “Then I shall be able to see the beggar! I’ve often
seen the smoke from the hill at home—drifting over the sea— and that
always gave me a lot to think about. They say it eats coals and is made
of iron.” He looked at Pelle uncertainly.

The great empty harbor basin, in which some hundreds of men were at
work, interested him greatly. Pelle pointed out the “Great Power,” who
was toiling like a madman and allowing himself to be saddled with the
heaviest work.

“So that is he!” cried Holm. “I knew his father; he was a man who
wanted to do things above the ordinary, but he never brought them off.
And how goes it with your father? Not any too well, as I’ve heard?”

Pelle had been home a little while before; nothing was going well
there, but as to that he was silent. “Karna isn’t very well,” he said.
“She tried to do too much; she’s strained herself lifting things.”

“They say he’ll have a difficult job to pull through. They have taken
too much on themselves,” Holm continued.

Pelle made no reply; and then the steamer absorbed their whole
attention. Talkative as he was, Holm quite forgot to wag his tongue.

The steamer was on the point of taking in cargo; the steam derricks
were busy at both hatches, squealing each time they swung round in
another direction. Holm became so light on his legs one might have
thought he was treading on needles; when the derrick swung round over
the quay and the chain came rattling down, he ran right back to the
granary. Pelle wanted to take him on board, but he would not hear of
it. “It looks a bad-tempered monster,” he said: “look how it sneezes
and fusses!”

On the quay, by the forward hold, the goods of a poverty-stricken
household lay all mixed together. A man stood there holding a mahogany
looking-glass, the only article of value, in his arms. His expression
was gloomy. By the manner in which he blew his nose—with his knuckles
instead of with his fingers—one could see that he had something
unaccustomed on hand. His eyes were fixed immovably on his miserable
household possessions, and they anxiously followed every breakable
article as it went its airy way into the vessel’s maw. His wife and
children were sitting on the quay-wall, eating out of a basket of
provisions. They had been sitting there for hours. The children were
tired and tearful; the mother was trying to console them, and to induce
them to sleep on the stone.

“Shan’t we start soon?” they asked continually, in complaining tones.

“Yes, the ship starts directly, but you must be very good or I shan’t
take you with me. And then you’ll come to the capital city, where they
eat white bread and always wear leather boots. The King himself lives
there, and they’ve got everything in the shops there.” She arranged her
shawl under their heads.

“But that’s Per Anker’s son from Blaaholt!” cried Holm, when he had
been standing a while on the quay and had caught sight of the man.
“What, are you leaving the country?”

“Yes, I’ve decided to do so,” said the man, in an undertone, passing
his hand over his face.

“And I thought you were doing so well! Didn’t you go to Ostland, and
didn’t you take over a hotel there?”

“Yes, they enticed me out there, and now I’ve lost everything there.”

“You ought to have considered—considering costs nothing but a little
trouble.”

“But they showed me false books, which showed a greater surplus than
there really was. Shipowner Monsen was behind the whole affair,
together with the brewer from the mainland, who had taken the hotel
over in payment of outstanding debts.”

“But how did big folks like that manage to smell you out?” Holm
scratched his head; he didn’t understand the whole affair.

“Oh, they’d heard of the ten thousand, of course, which I’d inherited
from my father. They throw their nets out for sums like that, and one
day they sent an agent to see me. Ten thousand was just enough for the
first instalment, and now they have taken the hotel over again. Out of
compassion, they let me keep this trash here.” He suddenly turned his
face away and wept; and then his wife came swiftly up to him.

Holm drew Pelle away. “They’d rather be rid of us,” he said quietly;
and he continued to discuss the man’s dismal misfortune, while they
strolled out along the mole. But Pelle was not listening to him. He had
caught sight of a little schooner which was cruising outside, and was
every moment growing more restless.

“I believe that’s the Iceland schooner!” he said at last. “So I must go
back.”

“Yes, run off,” said Holm, “and many thanks for your guidance, and give
my respects to Lasse and Karna.”

On the harbor hill Pelle met Master Jeppe, and farther on Drejer,
Klaussen, and Blom. The Iceland boat had kept them waiting for several
months; the news that she was in the roads quickly spread, and all the
shoemakers of the whole town were hurrying down to the harbor, in order
to hear whether good business had been done before the gangway was run
out.

“The Iceland boat is there now!” said the merchants and leather-
dealers, when they saw the shoemakers running by. “We must make haste
and make out our bills, for now the shoemakers will be having money.”

But the skipper had most of the boots and shoes still in his hold; he
returned with the terrifying news that no more boots and shoes could be
disposed of in Iceland. The winter industry had been of great
importance to the shoemakers.

“What does this mean?” asked Jeppe angrily. “You have been long enough
about it! Have you been trying to open another agency over there? In
others years you have managed to sell the whole lot.”

“I have done what I could,” replied the captain gloomily. “I offered
them to the dealers in big parcels, and then I lay there and carried on
a retail trade from the ship. Then I ran down the whole west coast; but
there is nothing to be done.”

“Well, well,” said Jeppe, “but do the Icelanders mean to go without
boots?”

“There’s the factories,” replied the captain.

“The factories, the factories!” Jeppe laughed disdainfully, but with a
touch of uncertainty. “You’ll tell me next that they can make shoes by
machinery—cut out and peg and sew and fix the treads and all? No, damn
it, that can only be done by human hands directed by human
intelligence. Shoemaking is work for men only. Perhaps I myself might
be replaced by a machine—by a few cog-wheels that go round and round!
Bah! A machine is dead, I know that, and it can’t think or adapt itself
to circumstances; you may have to shape the boot in a particular way
for a special foot, on account of tender toes, or—here I give the sole
a certain cut in the instep, so that it looks smart, or—well, one has
to be careful, or one cuts into the upper!”

“There are machines which make boots, and they make them cheaper than
you, too,” said the skipper brusquely.

“I should like to see them! Can you show me a boot that hasn’t been
made by human hands?” Jeppe laughed contemptuously. “No; there’s
something behind all this, by God! Some one is trying to play us a
trick!” The skipper went his way, offended.

Jeppe stuck to it that there was something uncanny about it—the idea of
a machine making boots was enough to haunt him. He kept on returning to
it.

“They’ll be making human beings by machinery too, soon!” he exclaimed
angrily.

“No,” said Baker Jörgen; “there, I believe, the old method will
survive!”

One day the skipper came in at the workshop door, banged a pair of
shoes down on the window-bench, and went out again. They had been
bought in England, and belonged to the helmsman of a bark which had
just come into the harbor. The young master looked at them, turned them
over in his hands, and looked at them again. Then he called Jeppe. They
were sewn throughout—shoes for a grown man, yet sewn throughout!
Moreover, the factory stamp was under the sole.

In Jeppe’s opinion they were not worth a couple of shillings. But he
could not get over the fact that they were machine-made.

“Then we are superfluous,” he said, in a quavering voice. All his old
importance seemed to have fallen from him. “For if they can make the
one kind on a machine, they can make another. The handicraft is
condemned to death, and we shall all be without bread one fine day!
Well, I, thank God, have not many years before me.” It was the first
time that Jeppe had admitted that he owed his life to God.

Every time he came into the workshop he began to expatiate on the same
subject. He would stand there turning the hated shoes over between his
hands. Then he would criticize them. “We must take more pains next
winter.”

“Father forgets it’s all up with us now,” said the young master
wearily.

Then the old man would be silent and hobble out. But after a time he
would be back again, fingering the boots and shoes, in order to
discover defects in them. His thoughts were constantly directed upon
this new subject; no song of praise, no eulogy of his handicraft,
passed his lips nowadays. If the young master came to him and asked his
help in some difficult situation, he would refuse it; he felt no
further desire to triumph over youth with his ancient dexterity, but
shuffled about and shrank into himself. “And all that we have thought
so highly of—what’s to become of it?” he would ask. “For machines don’t
make masterpieces and medal work, so where will real good work come
in?”

The young master did not look so far ahead; he thought principally of
the money that was needed. “Devil take it, Pelle, how are we going to
pay every one, Pelle?” he would ask dejectedly. Little Nikas had to
look out for something else; their means would not allow them to keep a
journeyman. So Nikas decided to marry, and to set up as a master
shoemaker in the north. The shoemaker of the Baptist community had just
died, and he could get plenty of customers by joining the sect; he was
already attending their services. “But go to work carefully!” said
Jeppe. “Or matters will go awry!”

It was a bad shock to all of them. Klaussen went bankrupt and had to
find work on the new harbor. Blom ran away, deserting his wife and
children, and they had to go home to the house of her parents. In the
workshop matters had been getting worse for a long time. And now this
had happened, throwing a dazzling light upon the whole question. But
the young master refused to believe the worst. “I shall soon be well
again now,” he said. “And then you will just see how I’ll work up the
business!” He lay in bed more often now, and was susceptible to every
change in the weather. Pelle had to see to everything.

“Run and borrow something!” the master would say. And if Pelle returned
with a refusal, he would look at the boy with his wide, wondering eyes.
“They’ve got the souls of grocers!” he would cry. “Then we must peg
those soles!”

“That won’t answer with ladies’ patent-leather shoes!” replied Pelle
very positively.

“Damn and blast it all, it will answer! We’ll black the bottom with
cobbler’s wax.”

But when the black was trodden off, Jungfer Lund and the others called,
and were wroth. They were not accustomed to walk in pegged shoes. “It’s
a misunderstanding!” said the young master, the perspiration standing
in clear beads on his forehead. Or he would hide and leave it to Pelle.
When it was over, he would reach up to the shelf, panting with
exhaustion. “Can’t you do anything for me, Pelle?” he whispered.

One day Pelle plucked up courage and said it certainly wasn’t healthy
to take so much spirit; the master needed so much now.

“Healthy?” said the master; “no, good God, it isn’t healthy! But the
beasts demand it! In the beginning I couldn’t get the stuff down,
especially beer; but now I’ve accustomed myself to it. If I didn’t feed
them, they’d soon rush all over me and eat me up.”

“Do they swallow it, then?”

“I should think they do! As much as ever you like to give them. Or have
you ever seen me tipsy? I can’t get drunk; the tubercles take it all.
And for them it’s sheer poison. On the day when I am able to get drunk
again I shall thank God, for then the beasts will be dead and the
spirit will be able to attack me again. Then it’ll only be a question
of stopping it, otherwise it’ll play the deuce with my mind!”

Since the journeyman had left, the meals had become more meager than
ever. The masters had not had enough money in the spring to buy a pig.
So there was no one to consume the scraps. Now they had to eat them all
themselves. Master Andres was never at the table; he took scarcely any
nourishment nowadays; a piece of bread-and-butter now and again, that
was all. Breakfast, at half-past seven, they ate alone. It consisted of
salt herrings, bread and hog’s lard, and soup. The soup was made out of
all sorts of odds and ends of bread and porridge, with an addition of
thin beer. It was fermented and unpalatable. What was left over from
breakfast was put into a great crock which stood in one corner of the
kitchen, on the floor, and this was warmed up again the next morning,
with the addition of a little fresh beer. So it went on all the year
round. The contents were renewed only when some one kicked the crock so
that it broke. The boys confined themselves to the herrings and the
lard; the soup they did not use except to fish about in it. They made a
jest of it, throwing all sorts of objects into it, and finding them
again after half a year.

Jeppe was still lying in the alcove, asleep; his nightcap was hoved
awry over one eye. Even in his sleep he still had a comical expression
of self-importance. The room was thick with vapor; the old man had his
own way of getting air, breathing it in with a long snort and letting
it run rumbling through him. If it got too bad, the boys would make a
noise; then he would wake and scold them.

They were longing for food by dinner-time; the moment Jeppe called his
“Dinner!” at the door they threw everything down, ranged themselves
according to age, and tumbled in behind him. They held one another
tightly by the coat-tails, and made stupid grimaces. Jeppe was
enthroned at the head of the table, a little cap on his head, trying to
preserve seemly table-manners. No one might begin before him or
continue after he had finished. They snatched at their spoons, laid
them down again with a terrified glance at the old man, and nearly
exploded with suppressed laughter. “Yes, I’m very hungry to-day, but
there’s no need for you to remark it!” he would say warningly, once
they were in full swing. Pelle would wink at the others, and they would
go on eating, emptying one dish after another. “There’s no respect
nowadays!” roared Jeppe, striking on the table. But when he did this
discipline suddenly entered into them, and they all struck the table
after him in turn. Sometimes, when matters got too bad, Master Andres
had to find some reason for coming into the room.

The long working-hours, the bad food, and the foul air of the workshop
left their mark on Pelle. His attachment to Master Andres was
limitless; he could sit there till midnight and work without payment if
a promise had been made to finish some particular job. But otherwise he
was imperceptibly slipping into the general slackness, sharing the
others’ opinion of the day as something utterly abominable, which one
must somehow endeavor to get through. To work at half pressure was a
physical necessity; his rare movements wearied him, and he felt less
inclined to work than to brood. The semi-darkness of the sunless
workshop bleached his skin and filled him with unhealthy imaginations.

He did little work now on his own account; but he had learned to manage
with very little. Whenever he contrived to get hold of a ten-öre piece,
he bought a savings-stamp, so that in this way he was able to collect a
few shillings, until they had grown to quite a little sum. Now and
again, too, he got a little help from Lasse, but Lasse found it more
and more difficult to spare anything. Moreover, he had learned to
compose his mind by his work.

XIX

The crazy Anker was knocking on the workshop door. “Bjerregrav is
dead!” he said solemnly. “Now there is only one who can mourn over
poverty!” Then he went away and announced the news to Baker Jörgen.
They heard him going from house to house, all along the street.

Bjerregrav dead! Only yesterday evening he was sitting yonder, on the
chair by the window-bench, and his crutch was standing in the corner by
the door; and he had offered them all his hand in his odd, ingenuous
way—that unpleasantly flabby hand, at whose touch they all felt a
certain aversion, so importunate was it, and almost skinless in its
warmth, so that one felt as if one had involuntarily touched some one
on a naked part. Pelle was always reminded of Father Lasse; he too had
never learned to put on armor, but had always remained the same loyal,
simple soul, unaffected by his hard experience.

The big baker had fallen foul of him as usual. Contact with this
childlike, thin-skinned creature, who let his very heart burn itself
out in a clasp of his hand, always made him brutal. “Now, Bjerregrav,
have you tried it—you know what—since we last saw you?”

Bjerregrav turned crimson. “I am content with the experience which the
dear God has chosen for me,” he answered, with blinking eyes.

“Would you believe it, he is over seventy and doesn’t know yet how a
woman is made!”

“Because, after all I find it suits me best to live alone, and then
there’s my club foot.”

“So he goes about asking questions about everything, things such as
every child knows about,” said Jeppe, in a superior tone. “Bjerregrav
has never rubbed off his childish innocence.”

Yet as he was going home, and Pelle was helping him over the gutter, he
was still in his mood of everlasting wonder.

“What star is that?” he said; “it has quite a different light to the
others. It looks so red to me—if only we don’t have a severe winter,
with the soil frozen and dear fuel for all the poor people.” Bjerregrav
sighed.

“You mustn’t look at the moon so much. Skipper Andersen came by his
accident simply because he slept on deck and the moon shone right in
his face; now he has gone crazy!”

Yesterday evening just the same as always—and now dead! And no one had
known or guessed, so that they might have been a little kinder to him
just at the last! He died in his bed, with his mind full of their last
disdainful words, and now they could never go to him and say: “Don’t
take any notice of it, Bjerregrav; we didn’t mean to be unkind.”
Perhaps their behavior had embittered his last hours. At all events,
there stood Jeppe and Brother Jörgen, and they could not look one
another in the face; an immovable burden weighed upon them.

And it meant a void—as when the clock in a room stops ticking. The
faithful sound of his crutch no longer approached the workshop about
six o’clock. The young master grew restless about that time; he could
not get used to the idea of Bjerregrav’s absence.

“Death is a hateful thing,” he would say, when the truth came over him;
“it is horribly repugnant. Why must one go away from here without
leaving the least part of one behind? Now I listen for Bjerregrav’s
crutch, and there’s a void in my ears, and after a time there won’t be
even that. Then he will be forgotten, and perhaps more besides, who
will have followed him, and so it goes on forever. Is there anything
reasonable about it all, Pelle? They talk about Heaven, but what should
I care about sitting on a damp cloud and singing ‘Hallelujah’? I’d much
rather go about down here and get myself a drink—especially if I had a
sound leg!”

The apprentices accompanied him to the grave. Jeppe wished them to do
so, as a sort of atonement. Jeppe himself and Baker Jörgen, in tall
hats, walked just behind the coffin. Otherwise only a few poor women
and children followed, who had joined the procession out of curiosity.
Coachman Due drove the hearse. He had now bought a pair of horses, and
this was his first good job.

Otherwise life flowed onward, sluggish and monotonous. Winter had come
again, with its commercial stagnation, and the Iceland trade was
ruined. The shoemakers did no more work by artificial light; there was
so little to do that it would not repay the cost of the petroleum; so
the hanging lamp was put on one side and the old tin lamp was brought
out again. That was good enough to sit round and to gossip by. The
neighbors would come into the twilight of the workshop; if Master
Andres was not there, they would slip out again, or they would sit idly
there until Jeppe said it was bed-time. Pelle had begun to occupy
himself with carving once more; he got as close to the lamp as
possible, listening to the conversation while he worked upon a button
which was to be carved like a twenty-five-öre piece. Morten was to have
it for a tie-pin.

The conversation turned upon the weather, and how fortunate it was that
the frost had not yet come to stop the great harbor works. Then it
touched upon the “Great Power,” and from him it glanced at the crazy
Anker, and poverty, and discontent. The Social Democrats “over yonder”
had for a long time been occupying the public mind. All the summer
through disquieting rumors had crossed the water; it was quite plain
that they were increasing their power and their numbers —but what were
they actually aiming at? In any case, it was nothing good. “They must
be the very poorest who are revolting,” said Wooden-leg Larsen. “So
their numbers must be very great!” It was as though one heard the
roaring of something or other out on the horizon, but did not know what
was going on there. The echo of the upheaval of the lower classes was
quite distorted by the time it reached the island; people understood
just so much, that the lowest classes wanted to turn God’s appointed
order upside down and to get to the top themselves, and involuntarily
their glance fell covertly on the poor in the town. But these were
going about in their customary half-slumber, working when there was
work to be had and contenting themselves with that. “That would be the
last straw,” said Jeppe, “here, where we have such a well-organized
poor-relief!”

Baker Jörgen was the most eager—every day he came with news of some
kind to discuss. Now they had threatened the life of the King himself!
And now the troops were called out.

“The troops!” The young master made a disdainful gesture. “That’ll help
a lot! If they merely throw a handful of dynamite among the soldiers
there won’t be a trouser-button left whole! No, they’ll conquer the
capital now!” His cheeks glowed: he saw the event already in his mind’s
eye. “Yes, and then? Then they’ll plunder the royal Mint!”

“Yes—no. Then they’ll come over here—the whole party!”

“Come over here? No, by God! We’d call out all the militia and shoot
them down from the shore. I’ve put my gun in order already!”

One day Marker came running in. “The pastrycook’s got a new journeyman
from over yonder—and he’s a Social Democrat!” he cried breathlessly.
“He came yesterday evening by the steamer.” Baker Jörgen had also heard
the news.

“Yes, now they’re on you!” said Jeppe, as one announcing disaster.
“You’ve all been trifling with the new spirit of the times. This would
have been something for Bjerregrav to see—him with his compassion for
the poor!”

“Let the tailor rest in peace in his grave,” said Wooden-leg Larsen, in
a conciliatory tone. “You mustn’t blame him for the angry masses that
exist to-day. He wanted nothing but people’s good—and perhaps these
people want to do good, too!”

“Good!” Jeppe was loud with scorn. “They want to overturn law and
order, and sell the fatherland to the Germans! They say the sum is
settled already, and all!”

“They say they’ll be let into the capital during the night, when our
own people are asleep,” said Marker.

“Yes,” said Master Andres solemnly. “They’ve let out that the key’s
hidden under the mat—the devils!” Here Baker Jörgen burst into a shout
of laughter; his laughter filled the whole workshop when he once began.

They guessed what sort of a fellow the new journeyman might be. No one
had seen him yet. “He certainly has red hair and a red beard,” said
Baker Jörgen. “That’s the good God’s way of marking those who have
signed themselves to the Evil One.”

“God knows what the pastrycook wants with him,” said Jeppe. “People of
that sort can’t do anything—they only ask. I’ve heard the whole lot of
them are free-thinkers.”

“What a lark!” The young master shook himself contentedly. “He won’t
grow old here in the town!”

“Old?” The baker drew up his heavy body. “To-morrow I shall go to the
pastrycook and demand that he be sent away. I am commander of the
militia, and I know all the townsfolk think as I do.”

Drejer thought it might be well to pray from the pulpit—as in time of
plague, and in the bad year when the field-mice infested the country.

Next morning Jörgen Kofod looked in on his way to the pastrycook’s. He
was wearing his old militia coat, and at his belt hung the leather
wallet in which flints for the old flint-locks had been carried many
years before. He filled his uniform well; but he came back without
success. The pastrycook praised his new journeyman beyond all measure,
and wouldn’t hear a word of sending him away. He was quite besotted.
“But we shall buy there no more—we must all stick to that—and no
respectable family can deal with the traitor in future.”

“Did you see the journeyman, Uncle Jörgen?” asked Master Andres
eagerly.

“Yes, I saw him—that is, from a distance! He had a pair of terrible,
piercing eyes; but he shan’t bewitch me with his serpent’s glance!”

In the evening Pelle and the others were strolling about the market in
order to catch a glimpse of the new journeyman—there were a number of
people there, and they were all strolling to and fro with the same
object in view. But he evidently kept the house.

And then one day, toward evening, the master came tumbling into the
workshop. “Hurry up, damn it all!” he cried, quite out of breath; “he’s
passing now!” They threw down their work and stumbled along the passage
into the best room, which at ordinary times they were not allowed to
enter. He was a tall, powerful man, with full cheeks and a big, dashing
moustache, quite as big as the master’s. His nostrils were distended,
and he held his chest well forward. His jacket and wasitcoat were open,
as though he wanted more air. Behind him slunk a few street urchins, in
the hope of seeing something; they had quite lost their accustomed
insolence, and followed him in silence.

“He walks as though the whole town belonged to him!” said Jeppe
scornfully. “But we’ll soon finish with him here!”

XX

Out in the street some one went by, and then another, and then another;
there was quite a trampling of feet. The young master knocked on the
wall. “What in the world is it, Pelle?” He did not mean to get up that
day.

Pelle ran out to seek information. “Jen’s father has got delirium— he’s
cleared the whole harbor and is threatening to kill them all!”

The master raised his head a little. “By God, I believe I shall get
up!” His eyes were glistening; presently he had got into his clothes,
and limped out of doors; they heard him coughing terribly in the cold.

Old Jeppe put his official cap in his pocket before he ran out; perhaps
the authorities would be needed. For a time the apprentices sat staring
at the door like sick birds; then they, too, ran out of the house.

Outside everything was in confusion. The wildest rumors were flying
about as to what Stonemason Jörgensen had done. The excitement could
not have been greater had a hostile squadron come to anchor and
commenced to bombard the town. Everybody dropped what he was holding
and rushed down to the harbor. The smaller side-streets were one
unbroken procession of children and old women and small employers in
their aprons. Old gouty seamen awoke from their decrepit slumber and
hobbled away, their hands dropped to the back of their loins and their
faces twisted with pain.

“Toot aroot aroot aroot,
All the pitchy snouts!”

A few street-urchins allowed themselves this little diversion, as Pelle
came running by with the other apprentices; otherwise all attention was
concentrated on the one fact that the “Great Power” had broken out
again! A certain festivity might have been noted on the faces of the
hurrying crowd; a vivid expectation. The stonemason had been quiet for
a long time now; he had labored like a giant beast of burden, to all
appearance extinguished, but toiling like an elephant, and quietly
taking home a couple of kroner in the evening. It was almost painful to
watch him, and a disappointed silence gathered about him. And now came
a sudden explosion, thrilling everybody through!

All had something to say of the “strong man” while they hastened down
to the harbor. Everybody had foreseen that it must come; he had for a
long time looked so strange, and had done nothing wrong, so that it was
only a wonder that it hadn’t come sooner! Such people ought not really
to be at large; they ought to be shut up for life! They went over the
events of his life for the hundredth time—from the day when he came
trudging into town, young and fearless in his rags, to find a market
for his energies, until the time when he drove his child into the sea
and settled down as a lunatic.

Down by the harbor the people were swarming; everybody who could creep
or crawl was stationed there. The crowd was good-humored, in spite of
the cold and the hard times; the people stamped their feet and cracked
jokes. The town had in a moment shaken off its winter sleep; the people
clambered up on the blocks of stone, or hung close-packed over the
rough timber frames that were to be sunk in building the breakwater.
They craned their necks and started nervously, as though some one might
come up suddenly and hit them over the head. Jens and Morten were
there, too; they stood quite apart and were speaking to one another.
They looked on mournfully, with shy, harrassed glances, and where the
great slip ran obliquely down to the floor of the basin the workmen
stood in crowds; they hitched up their trousers, for the sake of
something to do, exchanged embarrassed glances, and swore.

But down on the floor of the great basin the “Great Power” ruled
supreme. He was moving about alone, and he seemed to be as unconscious
of his surroundings as a child absorbed in play; he had some purpose of
his own to attend to. But what that was it was not easy to tell. In one
hand he held a bundle of dynamite cartridges; with the other he was
leaning on a heavy iron bar. His movements were slow and regular, not
unlike those of a clumsy bear. When he stood up, his comrades shouted
to him excitedly; they would come and tear him into little pieces; they
would slit his belly so that he could see his own bowels; they would
slash him with their knives and rub his wounds with vitriol if he
didn’t at once lay down his weapons and let them come down to their
work.

But the “Great Power” did not deign to answer. Perhaps he never heard
them. When he raised his head his glance swept the distance, laden with
a mysterious burden which was not human. That face, with its deadly
weariness, seemed in its sadness to be turned upon some distant place
whither none could follow him. “He is mad!” they whispered; “God has
taken away his wits!” Then he bent himself to his task again; he seemed
to be placing the cartridges under the great breakwater which he
himself had proposed. He was pulling cartridges out of every pocket;
that was why they had stuck out from his body curiously.

“What the devil is he going to do now? Blow up the breakwater?” they
asked, and tried to creep along behind the causeway, so as to come upon
him from behind. But he had eyes all round him; at the slightest
movement on their part he was there with his iron bar.

The whole works were at a standstill! Two hundred men stood idle hour
after hour, growling and swearing and threatening death and the devil,
but no one ventured forward. The overseer ran about irresolutely, and
even the engineer had lost his head; everything was in a state of
dissolution. The district judge was walking up and down in full
uniform, with an impenetrable expression of face; his mere presence had
a calming effect, but he did nothing.

Each proposal made was wilder than the last. Some wanted to make a
gigantic screen which might be pushed toward him; others suggested
capturing him with a huge pair of tongs made of long balks of timber;
but no one attempted to carry out these suggestions; they were only too
thankful that he allowed them to stand where they were. The “Great
Power” could throw a dynamite cartridge with such force that it would
explode where it struck and sweep away everything around it.

“The tip-wagons!” cried some one. Here at last was an idea! The wagons
were quickly filled with armed workmen. The catch was released, but the
wagons did not move. The “Great Power” with his devilish cunning, had
been before them; he had spiked the endless chain so that it could not
move. And now he struck away the under-pinning of a few of the
supports, so that the wagons could not be launched upon him by hand.

This was no delirium; no one had ever yet seen delirium manifest itself
in such a way! And he had touched no spirit since the day they had
carried his daughter home. No; it was the quietest resolution
imaginable; when they got up after the breakfast-hour and were
strolling down to the slip, he stood there with his iron bar and
quietly commanded them to keep away—the harbor belonged to him! They
had received more than one sharp blow before they understood that he
was in earnest; but there was no malice in him—one could see quite
plainly how it hurt him to strike them. It was certainly the devil
riding him—against his own will.

But where was it going to end? They had had enough of it now! For now
the great harbor bell was striking midday, and there was something
derisive in the sound, as though it was jeering at respectable people
who only wanted to resume their work. They didn’t want to waste the
whole day; neither did they want to risk life and limb against the
fool’s tricks of a lunatic. Even the mighty Bergendal had left his
contempt of death at home to-day, and was content to grumble like the
rest.

“We must knock a hole in the dam,” he said, “then the brute may perish
in the waves!”

They immediately picked up their tools, in order to set to work. The
engineer threatened them with the law and the authorities; it would
cost thousands of kroner to empty the harbor again. They would not
listen to him; what use was he if he couldn’t contrive for them to do
their work in peace?

They strolled toward the dam, with picks and iron crowbars, in order to
make the breach; the engineer and the police were thrust aside. Now it
was no longer a matter of work; it was a matter of showing that two
hundred men were not going to allow one crazy devil to make fools of
them. Beelzebub had got to be smoked out. Either the “Great Power”
would come up from the floor of the basin, or he would drown.

“You shall have a full day’s wages!” cried the engineer, to hold them
back. They did not listen; but when they reached the place of the
intended breach, the “Great Power” was standing at the foot of the dam,
swinging his pick so that the walls of the basin resounded. He beamed
with helpfulness at every blow; he had posted himself at the spot where
the water trickled in, and they saw with horror what an effect his
blows had. It was sheer madness to do what he was doing there.

“He’ll fill the harbor with water, the devil!” they cried, and they
hurled stones at his head. “And such a work as it was to empty it!”

The “Great Power” took cover behind a pile and worked away.

Then there was nothing for it but to shoot him down before he had
attained his object. A charge of shot in the legs, if nothing more, and
he would at least be rendered harmless. The district judge was at his
wits’ end; but Wooden-leg Larsen was already on the way home to fetch
his gun. Soon he came stumping back, surrounded by a swarm of boys.

“I’ve loaded it with coarse salt!” he cried, so that the judge might
hear.

“Now you’ll be shot dead!” they called down to him. In reply, the
“Great Power” struck his pick into the foot of the dam, so that the
trampled clay sighed and the moisture rose underfoot. A long crackling
sound told them that the first plank was shattered.

The final resolve had been formed quite of itself; everybody was
speaking of shooting him down as though the man had been long ago
sentenced, and now everybody was longing for the execution. They hated
the man below there with a secret hatred which needed no explanation;
his defiance and unruliness affected them like a slap in the face; they
would gladly have trampled him underfoot if they could.

They shouted down insults; they reminded him how in his presumption he
had ruined his family, and driven his daughter to suicide; and they
cast in his face his brutal attack on the rich shipowner Monsen, the
benefactor of the town. For a time they roused themselves from their
apathy in order to take a hand in striking him down. And now it must be
done thoroughly; they must have peace from this fellow, who couldn’t
wear his chains quietly, but must make them grate like the voice of
hatred that lay behind poverty and oppression.

The judge leaned out over the quay, in order to read his sentence over
the “Great Power”—three times must it be read, so the man might have
opportunity to repent. He was deathly pale, and at the second
announcement he started convulsively; but the “Great Power” threw no
dynamite cartridges at him; he merely lifted his hand to his head, as
though in greeting, and made a few thrusting motions in the air with
two of his fingers, which stood out from his forehead like a pair of
horns. From where the apothecary stood in a circle of fine ladies a
stifled laugh was heard. All faces were turned to where the
burgomaster’s wife stood tall and stately on a block of stone. But she
gazed down unflinchingly at the “Great Power” as though she had never
seen him before.

On the burgomaster the gesture had an effect like that of an explosion.
“Shoot him down!” he roared, with purple face, stumbling excitedly
along the breakwater. “Shoot him down, Larsen!”

But no one heeded his command. All were streaming toward the
wagon-slip, where an old, faded little woman was in the act of groping
her way along the track toward the floor of the basin. “It’s the ‘Great
Power’s’ mother!” The word passed from mouth to mouth. “No! How little
and old she is! One can hardly believe she could have brought such a
giant into the world!”

Excitedly they followed her, while she tottered over the broken stone
of the floor of the basin, which was littered with the _debris_ of
explosions until it resembled an ice-floe under pressure. She made her
way but slowly, and it looked continually as though she must break her
legs. But the old lady persevered, bent and withered though she was,
with her shortsighted eyes fixed on the rocks before her feet.

Then she perceived her son, who stood with his iron bar poised in his
hand. “Throw the stick away, Peter!” she cried sharply, and
mechanically he let the iron rod fall. He gave way before her, slowly,
until she had pinned him in a corner and attempted to seize him; then
he pushed her carefully aside, as though she was something that
inconvenienced him.

A sigh went through the crowd, and crept round the harbor like a
wandering shudder. “He strikes his own mother—he must be mad!” they
repeated, shuddering.

But the old woman was on her legs again. “Do you strike your own
mother, Peter?” she cried, with sheer amazement in her voice, and
reached up after his ear; she could not reach so far; but the “Great
Power” bent down as though something heavy pressed upon him, and
allowed her to seize his ear. Then she drew him away, over stock and
stone, in a slanting path to the slipway, where the people stood like a
wall. And he went, bowed, across the floor of the basin, like a great
beast in the little woman’s hands.

Up on the quay the police stood ready to fall upon the “Great Power”
with ropes; but the old woman was like pepper and salt when she saw
their intention. “Get out of the way, or I’ll let him loose on you!”
she hissed. “Don’t you see he has lost his intellect? Would you attack
a man whom God has smitten?”

“Yes, he is mad!” said the people, in a conciliatory tone; “let his
mother punish him—she is the nearest to him!”

XXI

Now Pelle and the youngest apprentice had to see to everything, for in
November Jens had finished his term and had left at once. He had not
the courage to go to Copenhagen to seek his fortune. So he rented a
room in the poor quarter of the town and settled there with his young
woman. They could not get married; he was only nineteen years of age.
When Pelle had business in the northern portion of the town he used to
look in on them. The table stood between the bed and the window, and
there sat Jens, working on repairs for the poor folk of the
neighborhood. When he had managed to get a job the girl would stand
bending over him, waiting intently until he had finished, so that she
could get something to eat. Then she would come back and cook something
right away at the stove, and Jens would sit there and watch her with
burning eyes until he had more work in hand. He had grown thin, and
sported a sparse pointed beard; a lack of nourishment was written in
both their faces. But they loved one another, and they helped one
another in everything, as awkwardly as two children who are playing at
“father and mother.” They had chosen the most dismal locality; the lane
fell steeply to the sea, and was full of refuse; mangy cats and dogs
ran about, dragging fish-offal up the steps of the houses and leaving
it lying there. Dirty children were grubbing about before every door.

One Sunday morning, when Pelle had run out there to see them, he heard
a shriek from one of the cottages, and the sound of chairs overturned.
Startled, he stood still. “That’s only one-eyed Johann beating his
wife,” said an eight-year-old girl; “he does that almost every day.”

Before the door, on a chair, sat an old man, staring imperturbably at a
little boy who continually circled round him.

Suddenly the child ran inward, laid his hands on the old man’s knee,
and said delightedly: “Father runs round the table—mother runs round
the table—father beats mother—mother runs round the table and—cries.”
He imitated the crying, laughed all over his little idiot’s face, and
dribbled. “Yes, yes,” was all the old man said. The child had no
eyebrows, and the forehead was hollow over the eyes. Gleefully he ran
round and round, stamping and imitating the uproar within. “Yes, yes,”
said the old man imperturbably, “yes, yes!”

At the window of one of the cottages sat a woman, gazing out
thoughtfully, her forehead leaning against the sash-bar. Pelle
recognized her; he greeted her cheerfully. She motioned him to the
door. Her bosom was still plump, but there was a shadow over her face.
“Hans!” she cried uncertainly, “here is Pelle, whose doing it was that
we found one another!”

The young workman replied from within the room: “Then he can clear out,
and I don’t care if he looks sharp about it!” He spoke threateningly.

In spite of the mild winter, Master Andres was almost always in bed
now. Pelle had to receive all instructions, and replace the master as
well as he could. There was no making of new boots now—only repairs.
Every moment the master would knock on the wall, in order to gossip a
little.

“To-morrow I shall get up,” he would say, and his eyes would shine;
“yes, that I shall, Pelle! Give me sunlight tomorrow, you devil’s imp!
This is the turning-point—now nature is turning round in me. When
that’s finished I shall be quite well! I can feel how it’s raging in my
blood—it’s war to the knife now—but the good sap is conquering! You
should see me when the business is well forward— this is nothing to
what it will be! And you won’t forget to borrow the list of the
lottery-drawings?”

He would not admit it to himself, but he was sinking. He no longer
cursed the clergy, and one day Jeppe silently went for the pastor. When
he had gone, Master Jeppe knocked on the wall.

“It’s really devilish queer,” he said, “for suppose there should be
anything in it? And then the pastor is so old, he ought rather to be
thinking of himself.” The master lay there and looked thoughtful; he
was staring up at the ceiling. He would lie all day like that; he did
not care about reading now. “Jens was really a good boy,” he would say
suddenly. “I could never endure him, but he really had a good
disposition. And do you believe that I shall ever be a man again?”

“Yes, when once the warm weather comes,” said Pelle.

From time to time the crazy Anker would come to ask after Master
Andres. Then the master would knock on the wall. “Let him come in,
then,” he said to Pelle. “I find myself so terribly wearisome.” Anker
had quite given up the marriage with the king’s eldest daughter, and
had now taken matters into his own hands. He was now working at a clock
which would _be_ the “new time” itself, and which would go in time with
the happiness of the people. He brought the wheels and spring and the
whole works with him, and explained them, while his gray eyes, fixed
out-of-doors, wandered from one object to another. They were never on
the thing he was exhibiting. He, like all the others, had a blind
confidence in the young master, and explained his invention in detail.
The clock would be so devised that it would show the time only when
every one in the land had what he wanted. “Then one can always see and
know if anybody is suffering need—there’ll be no excuse then! For the
time goes and goes, and they get nothing to eat; and one day their hour
comes, and they go hungry into the grave.” In his temples that
everlasting thing was beating which seemed to Pelle like the knocking
of a restless soul imprisoned there; and his eyes skipped from one
object to another with their vague, indescribable expression.

The master allowed himself to be quite carried away by Anker’s talk as
long as it lasted; but as soon as the watchmaker was on the other side
of the door he shook it all off. “It’s only the twaddle of a madman,”
he said, astonished at himself.

Then Anker repeated his visit, and had something else to show. It was a
cuckoo; every ten-thousandth year it would appear to the hour and cry
“Cuckoo!” The time would not be shown any longer—only the long, long
course of time—which never comes to an end—eternity. The master looked
at Anker bewildered. “Send him away, Pelle!” he whispered, wiping the
sweat from his forehead: “he makes me quite giddy; he’ll turn me crazy
with his nonsense!”

Pelle ought really to have spent Christmas at home, but the master
would not let him leave him. “Who will chat with me all that time and
look after everything?” he said. And Pelle himself was not so set on
going; it was no particular pleasure nowadays to go home. Karna was
ill, and Father Lasse had enough to do to keep her in good spirits. He
himself was valiant enough, but it did not escape Pelle that as time
went on he was sinking deeper into difficulties. He had not paid the
latest instalment due, and he had not done well with the winter
stone-breaking, which from year to year had helped him over the worst.
He had not sufficient strength for all that fell to his lot. But he was
plucky. “What does it matter if I’m a few hundred kroner in arrears
when I have improved the property to the tune of several thousand?” he
would say.

Pelle was obliged to admit the truth of that. “Raise a loan,” he
advised.

Lasse did try to do so. Every time he was in the town he went to the
lawyers and the savings-banks. But he could not raise a loan on the
land, as on paper it belonged to the commune, until, in a given number
of years, the whole of the sum to which Lasse had pledged himself
should be paid up. On Shrove Tuesday he was again in town, and then he
had lost his cheerful humor. “Now we know it, we had better give up at
once,” he said despondently, “for now Ole Jensen is haunting the
place—you know, he had the farm before me and hanged himself because he
couldn’t fulfill his engagements. Karna saw him last night.”

“Nonsense!” said Pelle. “Don’t believe such a thing!” But he could not
help believing in it just a little himself.

“You think so? But you see yourself that things are always getting more
difficult for us—and just now, too, when we have improved the whole
property so far, and ought to be enjoying the fruit of our labor. And
Karna can’t get well again,” he added despondently.

“Well, who knows?—perhaps it’s only superstition!” he cried at last. He
had courage for another attempt.

Master Andres was keeping his bed. But he was jolly enough there; the
more quickly he sank, the more boldly he talked. It was quite wonderful
to listen to his big words, and to see him lying there so wasted, ready
to take his departure when the time should come.

At the end of February the winter was so mild that people were already
beginning to look for the first heralds of spring; but then in one
night came the winter from the north, blustering southward on a mighty
ice-floe. Seen from the shore it looked as though all the vessels in
the world had hoisted new white sails, and were on the way to Bornholm,
to pay the island a visit, before they once again set out, after the
winter’s rest, on their distant voyages. But rejoicings over the
breaking-up of the ice were brief; in four-and- twenty hours the island
was hemmed in on every side by the ice-pack, so that there was not a
speck of open water to be seen.

And then the snow began. “We really thought it was time to begin work
on the land,” said the people; but they could put up with the
cold—there was still time enough. They proceeded to snowball one
another, and set their sledges in order; all through the winter there
had been no toboggan-slide. Soon the snow was up to one’s ankles, and
the slide was made. Now it might as well stop snowing. It might lie a
week or two, so that people might enjoy a few proper sleighing-parties.
But the snow continued to flutter down, until it reached to the knee,
and then to the waist; and by the time people were going to bed it was
no longer possible to struggle through it. And those who did not need
to rise before daylight were very near not getting out of bed at all,
for in the night a snowstorm set in, and by the morning the snow
reached to the roofs and covered all the windows. One could hear the
storm raging about the chimneys, but down below it was warm enough. The
apprentices had to go through the living-room to reach the workshop.
The snow was deep there and had closed all outlets.

“What the devil is it?” said Master Andres, looking at Pelle in alarm.
“Is the world coming to an end?”

Was the world coming to an end? Well, it might have come to an end
already; they could not hear the smallest sound from without, to tell
them whether their fellow-men were living still, or were already dead.
They had to burn lamps all day long; but the coal was out in the snow,
so they must contrive to get to the shed. They all pushed against the
upper half-door of the kitchen, and succeeded in forcing it so far open
that Pelle could just creep through. But once out there it was
impossible to move. He disappeared in the mass of snow. They must dig a
path to the well and the coal-shed; as for food, they would have to
manage as best they could. At noon the sun came out, and so far the
snow melted on the south side of the house that the upper edge of the
window admitted a little daylight. A faint milky shimmer shone through
the snow. But there was no sign of life outside.

“I believe we shall starve, like the people who go to the North Pole,”
said the master, his eyes and mouth quite round with excitement. His
eyes were blazing like lamps; he was deep in the world’s fairy-tale.

During the evening they dug and bored halfway to Baker Jörgen’s. They
must at least secure their connection with the baker. Jeppe went in
with a light. “Look out that it doesn’t fall on you,” he said
warningly. The light glistened in the snow, and the boys proceeded to
amuse themselves. The young master lay in bed, and called out at every
sound that came to him from outside—so loudly that his cough was
terrible. He could not contain himself for curiosity. “I’ll go and see
the robbers’ path, too, by God!” he said, over and over again. Jeppe
scolded him, but he took no notice. He had his way, got into his
trousers and fur jacket, and had a counterpane thrown about him. But he
could not stand up, and with a despairing cry he fell back on the bed.

Pelle watched him until his heart burned within him. He took the master
on his arm, and supported him carefully until they entered the tunnel.
“You are strong; good Lord, you are strong!” The master held Pelle
convulsively, one arm about his neck, while he waved the other in the
air, as defiantly as the strong man in the circus. “Hip, hip!” He was
infected by Pelle’s strength. Cautiously he turned round in the
glittering vault; his eyes shone like crystals of ice. But the fever
was raging in his emaciated body. Pelle felt it like a devouring fire
through all his clothes.

Next day the tunnel was driven farther—as far as Baker Jörgen’s steps,
and their connection with the outer world was secure. At Jörgen’s great
things had happened in the course of the last four- and-twenty hours.
Marie had been so excited by the idea that the end of the world was
perhaps at hand that she had hastily brought the little Jörgen into it.
Old Jörgen was in the seventh heaven; he had to come over at once and
tell them about it. “He’s a regular devil, and he’s the very image of
me!”

“That I can well believe!” cried Master Andres, and laughed. “And is
Uncle pleased?”

But Jeppe took the announcement very coolly; the condition of his
brother’s household did not please him. “Is Sören delighted with the
youngster?” he asked cautiously.

“Sören?” The baker gave vent to a shout of laughter. “He can think of
nothing but the last judgment—he’s praying to the dear God!”

Later in the day the noise of shovels was heard. The workmen were
outside; they cleared one of the pavements so that one could just get
by; but the surface of the street was still on a level with the roofs.

Now one could get down to the harbor once more; it felt almost as
though one were breathing again after a choking-fit. As far as the eyes
could reach the ice extended, packed in high ridges and long ramparts
where the waves had battled. A storm was brewing. “God be thanked!”
said the old seamen, “now the ice will go!” But it did not move. And
then they understood that the whole sea was frozen; there could not be
one open spot as big as a soup-plate on which the storm could begin its
work. But it was a wonderful sight, to see the sea lying dead and
motionless as a rocky desert in the midst of this devastating storm.

And one day the first farmer came to town, with news of the country.
The farms inland were snowed up; men had to dig pathways into the open
fields, and lead the horses in one by one; but of accidents he knew
nothing.

All activities came to a standstill. No one could do any work, and
everything had to be used sparingly—especially coals and oil, both of
which threatened to give out. The merchants had issued warnings as
early as the beginning of the second week. Then the people began to
take to all sorts of aimless doings; they built wonderful things with
the snow, or wandered over the ice from town to town. And one day a
dozen men made ready to go with the ice-boat to Sweden, to fetch the
post; people could no longer do without news from the outside world. On
Christiansö they had hoisted the flag of distress; provisions were
collected in small quantities, here, there, and everywhere, and
preparations were made for sending an expedition thither.

And then came the famine; it grew out of the frozen earth, and became
the only subject of conversation. But only those who were well provided
for spoke of it; those who suffered from want were silent. People
appealed to organized charity; there was Bjerregrav’s five thousand
kroner in the bank. But no, they were not there. Ship-owner Monsen
declared that Bjerregrav had recalled the money during his lifetime.
There was no statement in his will to the contrary. The people knew
nothing positively; but the matter gave plenty of occasion for
discussion. However things might be, Monsen was the great man, now as
always—and he gave a thousand kroner out of his own pocket for the help
of the needy.

Many eyes gazed out over the sea, but the men with the ice-boat did not
come back; the mysterious “over yonder” had swallowed them. It was as
though the world had sunk into the sea; as if, behind the rugged
ice-field which reached to the horizon, there now lay nothing but the
abyss.

The “Saints” were the only people who were busy; they held overcrowded
meetings, and spoke about the end of the world. All else lay as though
dead. Under these conditions, who would worry himself about the future?
In the workshop they sat in caps and overcoats and froze; the little
coal that still remained had to be saved for the master. Pelle was in
his room every moment. The master did not speak much now; he lay there
and tossed to and fro, his eyes gazing up at the ceiling; but as soon
as Pelle had left him he knocked for him again. “How are things going
now?” he would ask wearily. “Run down to the harbor and see whether the
ice isn’t near breaking—it is so very cold; at this rate the whole
earth will become a lump of ice. This evening they will certainly hold
another meeting about the last judgment. Run and hear what they think
about it.”

Pelle went, and returned with the desired information, but when he had
done so the master had usually forgotten all about the matter. From
time to time Pelle would announce that there seemed to be a bluish
shimmer on the sea, far beyond the ice. Then the master’s eyes would
light up. But he was always cast down again by the next announcement.
“The sea will eat up the ice yet—you’ll see,” said Master Andres, as
though from a great distance. “But perhaps it cannot digest so much.
Then the cold will get the upper hand, and we shall all be done for!”

But one morning the ice-field drove out seaward, and a hundred men got
ready to clear the channel of ice by means of dynamite. Three weeks had
gone by since any post had been received from the outer world, and the
steamer went out in order to fetch news from Sweden. It was caught by
the ice out in the offing, and driven toward the south; from the harbor
they could see it for days, drifting about in the ice-pack, now to the
north and now to the south.

At last the heavy bonds were broken. But it was difficult alike for the
earth and for mankind to resume the normal activities of life.
Everybody’s health had suffered. The young master could not stand the
change from the bitter frost to the thaw; when his cough did not
torment him he lay quite still. “Oh, I suffer so dreadfully, Pelle!” he
complained, whispering. “I have no pain—but I suffer, Pelle.”

But then one morning he was in a good humor. “Now I am past the
turning-point,” he said, in a weak but cheerful voice; “now you’ll just
see how quickly I shall get well. What day is it really to-day?
Thursday? Death and the devil! then I must renew my lottery ticket! I
am so light I was flying through the air all night long, and if I only
shut my eyes I am flying again. That is the force in the new blood—by
summer I shall be quite well. Then I shall go out and see the world!
But one never—deuce take it!—gets to see the best—the stars and space
and all that! So man must learn to fly. But I was there last night.”

Then the cough overpowered him again. Pelle had to lift him up; at
every spasm there was a wet, slapping sound in his chest. He put one
hand on Pelle’s shoulder and leaned his forehead against the boy’s
body. Suddenly the cough ceased; and the white, bony hand convulsively
clutched Pelle’s shoulder. “Pelle, Pelle!” moaned the master, and he
gazed at him, a horrible anxiety in his dying eyes.

“What does he see now?” thought Pelle, shuddering; and he laid him back
on his pillow.

XXII

Often enough did Pelle regret that he had wasted five years as
apprentice. During his apprenticeship he had seen a hundred, nay, two
hundred youths pass into the ranks of the journeymen; and then they
were forthwith turned into the streets, while new apprentices from the
country filled up the ranks again. There they were, and they had to
stand on their own legs. In most cases they had learned nothing
properly; they had only sat earning their master’s daily bread, and now
they suddenly had to vindicate their calling. Emil had gone to the
dogs; Peter was a postman and earned a krone a day, and had to go five
miles to do that. When he got home he had to sit over the knee-strap
and waxed-end, and earn the rest of his livelihood at night. Many
forsook their calling altogether. They had spent the best years of
their youth in useless labor.

Jens had done no better than the majority. He sat all day over repairs,
and had become a small employer, but they were positively starving. The
girl had recently had a miscarriage, and they had nothing to eat. When
Pelle went to see them they were usually sitting still and staring at
one another with red eyes; and over their heads hung the threat of the
police, for they were not yet married. “If I only understood farm
work!” said Jens. “Then I’d go into the country and serve with a
farmer.”

Despite all his recklessness, Pelle could not help seeing his own fate
in theirs; only his attachment to Master Andres had hindered him from
taking to his heels and beginning something else.

Now everything suddenly came to an end; old Jeppe sold the business,
with apprentices and all. Pelle did not wish to be sold. Now was his
opportunity; now, by a sudden resolve, he might bring this whole
chapter to an end.

“You don’t go!” said Jeppe threateningly; “you have still a year of
your apprenticeship before you! I shall give information to the police
about you—and you’ve learned what that means.” But Pelle went.
Afterward they could run to the police as often as they liked.

With a light and cheerful mind he rented an attic on the hill above the
harbor, and removed his possessions thither. He felt as though he was
stretching himself after his years of slavery; he no longer had any one
over him, and he had no responsibilities, and no burdens. Year by year
he had fought against a continual descent. It had by no means fortified
his youthful courage vainly to pit his energies, day after day, against
the decline of the workshop; he was only able to hold back the tide a
little, and as for the rest, he must perforce sink with the business.

A good share of resignation and a little too much patience with regard
to his eighteen years—this was for the moment his net profit from the
process of going downhill.

Now it all lay at the foot of the hill, and he could stand aside and
draw himself up a little. His conscience was clear, and he felt a
somewhat mitigated delight in his freedom; that was all he had won. He
had no money for traveling, and his clothes were in a sad case; but
that did not trouble him at first. He breathed deeply, and considered
the times. The death of the master had left a great void within him; he
missed that intelligent glance, which had given him the feeling that he
was serving an idea; and the world was a terribly desolate and
God-forsaken place now that this glance no longer rested on him, half
lucid and half unfathomable, and now that the voice was silent which
had always gone to his heart—when it was angry just as much as when it
was infinitely mild or frolicsome. And where he was used to hear that
voice his ear encountered only solitude.

He did nothing to arouse himself; he was for the present idle. This or
that employer was after him, truly, for they all knew that he was a
quick and reliable worker, and would willingly have taken him as
apprentice, for a krone a week and his food. But Pelle would have none
of them; he felt that his future did not lie in that direction. Beyond
that he knew nothing, but only waited, with a curious apathy, for
something to happen—something, anything. He had been hurried out of his
settled way of life, yet he had no desire to set to work. From his
window he could look out over the harbor, where the extensive
alterations that had been interrupted by the winter were again in full
swing. And the murmur of the work rose up to him; they were hewing,
boring and blasting; the tip-wagons wandered in long rows up the
slipway, threw their contents out on the shore, and returned. His limbs
longed for strenuous work with pick and shovel, but his thoughts took
another direction.

If he walked along the street the industrious townsfolk would turn to
look after him, exchanging remarks which were loud enough to reach his
ear. “There goes Master Jeppe’s apprentice, loafing along,” they would
tell one another; “young and strong he is, but he doesn’t like work.
He’ll turn into a loafer if you give him time— that you can see. Yes,
wasn’t it he who got a beating at the town hall, for his brutal
behavior? What else can you expect of him?”

So then Pelle kept the house. Now and again he got a little work from
comrades, and poor people of his acquaintance; he did his best without
proper implements, or if he could not manage otherwise he would go to
Jens. Jens had lasts and an anvil. At other times he sat at the window,
freezing, and gazed out over the harbor and the sea. He saw the ships
being rigged and fitted, and with every ship that went gliding out of
the harbor, to disappear below the horizon, it seemed to him that a
last possibility had escaped him; but although he had such a feeling it
did not stir him. He shrank from Morten, and did not mix with other
people. He was ashamed to be so idle when every one else was working.

As for food, he managed fairly well; he lived on milk and bread, and
needed only a few öre a day. He was able to avoid extreme hunger. As
for firing, it was not to be thought of. Sitting idly in his room, he
enjoyed his repose, apart from a certain feeling of shame; otherwise he
was sunk in apathy.

On sunny mornings he got up early and slipped out of the town. All day
long he would stroll in the great pine-woods or lie on the dunes by the
shore, with the murmur of the sea sounding through his half- slumber.
He ate like a dog whatever he could get that was eatable, without
particularly thinking of what it consisted. The glitter of the sun on
the water, and the poignant scent of the pine-trees, and the first
rising of the sluggish sap which came with spring, made him dizzy, and
filled his brain with half-wild imaginations. The wild animals were not
afraid of him, but only stood for a moment inhaling his scent; then
they would resume their daily life before his eyes. They had no power
to disturb his half-slumber; but if human beings approached, he would
hide himself, with a feeling of hostility, almost of hatred. He
experienced a kind of well-being out in the country. The thought often
occurred to him that he would give up his dwelling in the town, and
creep at night under the nearest tree.

Only when the darkness hid him did he return to his room. He would
throw himself, fully dressed, on his bed, and lie there until he fell
asleep. As though from a remote distance he could hear his next-door
neighbor, Ström the diver, moving about his room with tottering steps,
and clattering with his cooking utensils close at hand. The smell of
food, mingled with tobacco smoke and the odor of bedding, which crept
through the thin board partition, and hovered, heavy and suffocating,
above his head, became even more overpowering. His mouth watered. He
shut his eyes and forced himself to think of other things, in order to
deaden his hunger. Then a light, well-known step sounded on the stairs
and some one knocked on the door—it was Morten. “Are you there, Pelle?”
he asked. But Pelle did not move.

Pelle could hear Ström attacking his bread with great bites, and
chewing it with a smacking sound; and suddenly in the intervals of
mastication, another sound was audible; a curious bellowing, which was
interrupted every time the man took a bite; it sounded like a child
eating and crying simultaneously. That another person should cry melted
something in Pelle, and filled him with a feeble sense of something
living; he raised himself on his elbows and listened to Ström
struggling with terror, while cold shudders chased one another down his
back.

People said that Ström lived here because in his youth he had done
something at home. Pelle forgot his own need and listened, rigid with
terror, to this conflict with the powers of evil. Patiently, through
his clenched teeth, in a voice broken by weeping, Ström attacked the
throng of tiny devils with words from the Bible. “I’ll do something to
you at last that’ll make you tuck your tails between your legs!” he
cried, when he had read a little. There was a peculiar heaviness about
his speech, which seemed charged with a craving for peace. “Ah!” he
cried presently, “you want some more, you damned rascals, do you? Then
what have you got to say to this —‘I, the Lord thy God, the God of
Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob’”—Ström hurled the words at
them, anger crept into his voice, and suddenly he lost patience. He
took the Bible and flung it on the floor. “Satan take you, then!” he
shouted, laying about him with the furniture.

Pelle lay bathed in sweat, listening to this demoniac struggle; and it
was with a feeling of relief that he heard Ström open the window and
drive the devils out over the roofs. The diver fought the last part of
the battle with a certain humor. He addressed the corner of the room in
a wheedling, flattering tone. “Come, you sweet, pretty little devil!
What a white skin you have—Ström would so like to stroke you a little!
No, you didn’t expect that! Are we getting too clever for you? What?
You’d still bite, would you, you devil’s brat? There, don’t scowl like
that!”—Ström shut the window with an inward chuckle.

For a while he strolled about amusing himself. “Ström is still man
enough to clear up Hell itself!” he said, delighted.

Pelle heard him go to bed, and he himself fell asleep. But in the night
he awoke; Ström was beating time with his head against the board
partition, while he lay tearfully singing “By the waters of Babylon!”
But halfway through the psalm the diver stopped and stood up. Pelle
heard him groping to and fro across the floor and out on the landing.
Seized with alarm, he sprang out of bed and struck a light. Outside
stood Ström, in the act of throwing a noose over the rafters. “What do
you want here?” he said fiercely. “Can I never get any peace from you?”

“Why do you want to lay hands on yourself?” asked Pelle quietly.

“There’s a woman and a little child sitting there, and she’s forever
and forever crying in my ear. I can’t stand it any longer!” answered
Ström, knotting his rope.

“Think of the little child, then!” said Pelle firmly, and he tore down
the rope. Ström submitted to be led back into his room, and he crawled
into bed. But Pelle must stay with him; he dared not put out the light
and lie alone in the darkness.

“Is it the devils?” asked Pelle.

“What devils?” Ström knew nothing of any devils. “No, it’s remorse,” he
replied. “The child and its mother are continually complaining of my
faithlessness.”

But next moment he would spring out of bed and stand there whistling as
though he was coaxing a dog. With a sudden grip he seized something by
the throat, opened the window, and threw it out. “So, that was it!” he
said, relieved; “now there’s none of the devil’s brood left!” He
reached after the bottle of brandy.

“Leave it alone!” said Pelle, and he took the bottle away from him. His
will increased in strength at the sight of the other’s misery.

Ström crept into bed again. He lay there tossing to and fro, and his
teeth chattered. “If I could only have a mouthful!” he said pleadingly;
“what harm can that do me? It’s the only thing that helps me! Why
should a man always torment himself and play the respectable when he
can buy peace for his soul so cheaply? Give me a mouthful!” Pelle
passed him the bottle. “You should take one yourself—it sets a man up!
Do you think I can’t see that you’ve suffered shipwreck, too? The poor
man goes aground so easily, he has so little water under the keel. And
who d’you think will help him to get off again if he’s betrayed his own
best friend? Take a swallow, then—it wakes the devil in us and gives us
courage to live.”

No, Pelle wanted to go to bed.

“Why do you want to go now? Stay here, it is so comfortable. If you
could, tell me about something, something that’ll drive that damned
noise out of my ears for a bit! There’s a young woman and a little
child, and they’re always crying in my ears.”

Pelle stayed, and tried to distract the diver. He looked into his own
empty soul, and he could find nothing there; so he told the man of
Father Lasse and of their life at Stone Farm, with everything mixed up
just as it occurred to him. But his memories rose up within him as he
spoke of them, and they gazed at him so mournfully that they awakened
his crippled soul to life. Suddenly he felt utterly wretched about
himself, and he broke down helplessly.

“Now, now!” said Ström, raising his head. “Is it your turn now? Have
you, too, something wicked to repent of, or what is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? That’s almost like the women—crying is one of their
pleasures. But Ström doesn’t hang his head; he would like to be at
peace with himself, if it weren’t for a pair of child’s eyes that look
at him so reproachfully, day in and day out, and the crying of a girl!
They’re both at home there in Sweden, wringing their hands for their
daily bread. And the one that should provide for them is away from them
here and throws away his earnings in the beer-houses. But perhaps
they’re dead now because I’ve forsaken them. Look you, that is a real
grief; there’s no child’s talk about that! But you must take a drink
for it.”

But Pelle did not hear; he sat there gazing blindly in front of him.
All at once the chair began to sail through air with him; he was almost
fainting with hunger. “Give me just one drink—I’ve had not a mouthful
of food to-day!” He smiled a shamefaced smile at the confession.

With one leap, Ström was out of bed. “No, then you shall have something
to eat,” he said eagerly, and he fetched some food. “Did one ever see
the like—such a desperate devil! To take brandy on an empty stomach!
Eat now, and then you can drink yourself full elsewhere! Ström has
enough on his conscience without that…. He can drink his brandy
himself! Well, well, then, so you cried from hunger! It sounded like a
child crying to me!”

Pelle often experienced such nights. They enlarged his world in the
direction of the darkness. When he came home late and groped his way
across the landing he always experienced a secret terror lest he should
rub against Ström’s lifeless body; and he only breathed freely when he
heard him snoring or ramping round his room. He liked to look in on him
before he went to bed.

Ström was always delighted to see him, and gave him food; but brandy he
would not give him. “It’s not for fellows as young as you! You’ll get
the taste for it early enough, perhaps.”

“You drink, yourself,” said Pelle obstinately.

“Yes, I drink to deaden remorse. But that’s not necessary in your
case.”

“I’m so empty inside,” said Pelle. “Really brandy might set me up a
little. I feel as if I weren’t human at all, but a dead thing, a table,
for instance.”

“You must do something—anything—or you’ll become a good-for- nothing.
I’ve seen so many of our sort go to the dogs; we haven’t enough power
of resistance!”

“It’s all the same to me what becomes of me!” replied Pelle drowsily.
“I’m sick of the whole thing!”

XXIII

It was Sunday, and Pelle felt a longing for something unaccustomed. At
first he went out to see Jens, but the young couple had had a dispute
and had come to blows. The girl had let the frying-pan containing the
dinner fall into the fire, and Jens had given her a box on the ears.
She was still white and poorly after her miscarriage. Now they were
sitting each in a corner, sulking like children. They were both
penitent, but neither would say the first word. Pelle succeeded in
reconciling them, and they wanted him to stay for dinner. “We’ve still
got potatoes and salt, and I can borrow a drop of brandy from a
neighbor!” But Pelle went; he could not watch them hanging on one
another’s necks, half weeping, and kissing and babbling, and eternally
asking pardon of one another.

So he went out to Due’s. They had removed to an old merchant’s house
where there was room for Due’s horses. They seemed to be getting on
well. It was said that the old consul took an interest in them and
helped them on. Pelle never went into the house, but looked up Due in
the stable, and if he was not at home Pelle would go away again. Anna
did not treat him as though he was welcome. Due himself greeted him
cordially. If he had no rounds to make he used to hang about the stable
and potter round the horses; he did not care about being in the house.
Pelle gave him a hand, cutting chaff for him, or helping in anything
that came to hand, and then they would go into the house together. Due
was at once another man if he had Pelle behind him; he was more decided
in his behavior. Anna was gradually and increasingly getting the upper
hand over him.

She was just as decided as ever, and kept the house in good order. She
no longer had little Marie with her. She dressed her own two children
well, and sent them to a school for young children, and she paid for
their attendance. She was delightful to look at, and understood how to
dress herself, but she would hear nothing good of any one else. Pelle
was not smart enough for her; she turned up her nose at his every-day
clothes, and in order to make him feel uncomfortable she was always
talking about Alfred’s engagement to Merchant Lau’s daughter. This was
a fine match for him. “_He_ doesn’t loaf about and sleep his time away,
and sniff at other people’s doors in order to get their plate of food,”
she said. Pelle only laughed; nothing made any particular impression on
him nowadays. The children ran about, wearying themselves in their fine
clothes —they must not play with the poor children out-of-doors, and
must not make themselves dirty. “Oh, play with us for a bit, Uncle
Pelle!” they would say, hanging on to him. “Aren’t you our uncle too?
Mother says you aren’t our uncle. She’s always wanting us to call the
consul uncle, but we just run away. His nose is so horribly red.”

“Does the consul come to see you, then?” asked Pelle.

“Yes, he often comes—he’s here now!”

Pelle peeped into the yard. The pretty wagon had been taken out.
“Father’s gone out,” said the children. Then he slipped home again. He
stole a scrap of bread and a drop of brandy from Ström, who was not at
home, and threw himself on his bed. As the darkness came on he strolled
out and lounged, freezing, about the street corners. He had a vague
desire to do something. Well-dressed people were promenading up and
down the street, and many of his acquaintances were there, taking their
girls for a walk; he avoided having to greet them, and to listen to
whispered remarks and laughter at his expense. Lethargic as he was, he
still had the acute sense of hearing that dated from the time of his
disgrace at the town hall. People enjoyed finding something to say when
he passed them; their laughter still had the effect of making his knees
begin to jerk with a nervous movement, like the quickly-suppressed
commencement of a flight.

He slipped into a side-street; he had buttoned his thin jacket tightly
about him, and turned up his collar. In the half-darkness of the
doorways stood young men and girls, in familiar, whispered
conversation. Warmth radiated from the girls, and their bibbed aprons
shone in the darkness. Pelle crept along in the cold, and knew less
than ever what to do with himself; he ranged about to find a sweetheart
for himself.

In the market he met Alfred, arm-in-arm with Lau’s daughter. He carried
a smart walking-stick, and wore brown gloves and a tall hat. “The
scamp—he still owes me two and a half kroner, and I shall never get it
out of him!” thought Pelle, and for a moment he felt a real desire to
spring upon him and to roll all his finery in the mud. Alfred turned
his head the other way. “He only knows me when he wants to do something
and has no money!” said Pelle bitterly.

He ran down the street at a jog-trot, in order to keep himself warm,
turning his eyes toward the windows. The bookbinder and his wife were
sitting at home, singing pious songs. The man drank when at home; that
one could see plainly on the blind. At the wool-merchant’s they were
having supper.

Farther on, at the Sow’s, there was life, as always. A mist of tobacco
smoke and a great deal of noise were escaping through the open window.
The Sow kept a house for idle seamen, and made a great deal of money.
Pelle had often been invited to visit her, but had always considered
himself too good; moreover, he could not bear Rud. But this evening he
seized greedily upon the memory of this invitation, and went in.
Perhaps a mouthful of food would come his way.

At a round table sat a few tipsy seamen, shouting at one another, and
making a deafening row. The Sow sat on a young fellow’s knee; she lay
half over the table and dabbled her fingers in a puddle of spilt beer;
from time to time she shouted right in the face of those who were
making the most noise. The last few years had not reduced her
circumference.

“Now look at that! Is that you, Pelle?” she said, and she stood up to
give him her hand. She was not quite sober, and had some difficulty in
taking his. “That’s nice of you to come, now—I really thought we
weren’t good enough for you! Now, sit down and have a drop; it won’t
cost you anything.” She motioned to him to take a seat.

The sailors were out of humor; they sat staring sleepily at Pelle.
Their heavy heads wagged helplessly. “That’s surely a new customer?”
asked one, and the others laughed.

The Sow laughed too, but all at once became serious. “Then you can
leave him out of your games, for he’s far too good to be dragged into
anything; one knows what you are!” She sank into a chair next to Pelle,
and sat looking at him, while she rubbed her own greasy countenance.
“How tall and fine you’ve grown—but you aren’t well-off for clothes!
And you don’t look to be overfed…. Ah, I’ve known you from the time
when you and your father came into the country; a little fellow you
were then, and Lasse brought me my mother’s hymn-book!” She was
suddenly silent, and her eyes filled with tears.

One of the sailors whispered to the rest, and they began to laugh.

“Stop laughing, you swine!” she cried angrily, and she crossed over to
them. “You aren’t going to play any of your nonsense with him—he comes
like a memory of the times when I was respectable, too. His father is
the only creature living who can prove that I was once a pretty,
innocent little maid, who got into bad company. He’s had me on his lap
and sung lullabies to me.” She looked about her defiantly, and her red
face quivered.

“Didn’t you weigh as much then as you do now?” asked one of the men,
and embraced her.

“Don’t play the fool with the little thing!” cried another. “Don’t you
see she’s crying? Take her on your lap and sing her a lullaby— then
she’ll believe you are Lasse-Basse!”

Raging, she snatched up a bottle. “Will you hold your tongue with your
jeering? Or you’ll get this on the head!” Her greasy features seemed to
run together in her excitement.

They let her be, and she sat there sobbing, her hands before her face.
“Is your father still alive?” she asked. “Then give him my
respects—just say the Sow sends her respects—you can safely call me the
Sow!—and tell him he’s the only person in the world I have to thank for
anything. He thought well of me, and he brought me the news of mother’s
death.”

Pelle sat there listening with constraint to her tearful speech, with
an empty smile. He had knives in his bowels, he was so empty, and the
beer was going to his head. He remembered all the details of Stone
Farm, where he had first seen and heard the Sow, just as Father Lasse
had recalled her home and her childhood to her. But he did not connect
any further ideas with that meeting; it was a long time ago, and—”isn’t
she going to give me anything to eat?” he thought, and listened
unsympathetically to her heavy breathing.

The sailors sat looking at her constrainedly; a solemn silence lay on
their mist-wreathed faces; they were like drunken men standing about a
grave. “Give over washing the decks now—and get us something to drink!”
an old fellow said suddenly. “Each of us knows what it is to have times
of childish innocence come back to him, and I say it’s a jolly fine
thing when they will peep through the door at old devils like us! But
let the water stop overboard now, I say! The more one scours an old
barge the more damage comes to light! So, give us something to drink
now, and then the cards, ma’am!”

She stood up and gave them what they asked for; she had mastered her
emotion, but her legs were still heavy.

“That’s right—and then we’ve got a sort of idea that to-day is Sunday!
Show us your skill, ma’am, quick!”

“But that costs a krone, you know!” she said, laughing.

They collected the money and she went behind the bar and undressed. She
reappeared in her chemise, with a burning candle in her hand….

Pelle slipped out. He was quite dizzy with hunger and a dull feeling of
shame. He strolled on at random, not knowing what he did. He had only
one feeling—that everything in the world was indifferent to him,
whatever happened—whether he went on living in laborious honesty, or
defiled himself with drinking, or perished—it was all one to him! What
was the good of it all? No one cared what happened to him—not even he
himself. Not a human soul would miss him if he went to the dogs—but
yes, there was Lasse, Father Lasse! But as for going home now and
allowing them to see him in all his wretchedness —when they had
expected such unreasonable things of him—no, he could not do it! The
last remnants of shame protested against it. And to work—what at? His
dream was dead. He stood there with a vague feeling that he had come to
the very edge of the abyss, which is so ominous to those in the depths.

Year in, year out, he had kept himself by his never-flagging exertions,
and with the demented idea that he was mounting upward. And now he
stood very near the lowest depth of life—the very bottom. And he was so
tired. Why not let himself sink yet a little further; why not let
destiny run its course? There would be a seductive repose in the acts,
after his crazy struggle against the superior powers.

The sound of a hymn aroused him slightly. He had come down a
side-street, and right in front of him stood a wide, lofty building,
with the gable facing the street and a cross on the point of the gable.
Hundreds of voices had sought, in the course of the years, to entice
him hither; but in his arrogance he had had no use for spiritual
things. What was there here for a smart youngster? And now he was
stranded outside! And now he felt a longing for a little care, and he
had a feeling that a hand had led him hither.

The hall was quite filled with poor families. They were packed
amazingly close together on the benches, each family by itself; the
men, as a rule, were asleep, and the women had all they could do to
quiet their children, and to make them sit politely with their legs
sticking out in front of them. These were people who had come to enjoy
a little light and warmth, free of cost, in the midst of their desolate
lives; on Sundays, at least, they thought, they could ask for a little
of these things. They were the very poorest of the poor, and they
sought refuge here, where they would not be persecuted, and where they
were promised their part in the millennium. Pelle knew them all, both
those whom he had seen before and those others, who wore the same
expression, as of people drowned in the ocean of life. He soon found
himself cozily settled among all these dishevelled nestlings, whom the
pitiless wind had driven oversea, and who were now washed ashore by the
waves.

A tall man with a full beard and a pair of good child-like eyes stood
up among the benches, beating the time of a hymn—he was Dam, the smith.
He led the singing, and as he stood there he bent his knees in time,
and they all sang with him, with tremulous voices, each in his own key,
of that which had passed over them. The notes forced their way through
the parched, worn throats, cowering, as though afraid, now that they
had flown into the light. Hesitatingly they unfurled their fragile,
gauzy wings, and floated out into the room, up from the quivering lips.
And under the roof they met with their hundreds of sisters, and their
defilement fell from them. They became a jubilation, loud and splendid,
over some unknown treasure, over the kingdom of happiness, that was
close at hand. To Pelle it seemed that the air must be full of
butterflies winged with sunshine:

“O blessed, blessed shall we be
When we, from care and mis’ry free,
The splendor of Thy kingdom see,
And with our Saviour come to Thee!”

“Mother, I’m hungry!” said a child’s voice, as the hymn was followed by
silence. The mother, herself emaciated, silenced the child with a
shocked expression, and looked wonderingly about her. What a stupid
idea of the child’s! “You’ve just had your food!” she said loudly, as
though she had been comfortably off. But the child went on crying:
“Mother, I’m so hungry!”

Then Baker Jörgen’s Sören came by, and gave the child a roll. He had a
whole basket full of bread. “Are there any more children who are
hungry?” he asked aloud. He looked easily in people’s faces, and was
quite another creature to what he was at home; here no one laughed at
him, and no one whispered that he was the brother of his own son.

An old white-bearded man mounted the pulpit at the back of the hall.
“That’s him,” was whispered in every direction, and they all hastened
to clear their throats by coughing, and to induce the children to empty
their mouths of food. He took the cry of the little one as his text:
“Mother, I am so hungry!” That was the voice of the world—that great,
terrible cry—put into the mouth of a child. He saw no one there who had
not writhed at the sound of that cry on the lips of his own flesh and
blood—no one who, lest he should hear it again, had not sought to
secure bread during his lifetime—no one who had not been beaten back.
But they did not see God’s hand when that hand, in its loving-kindness,
changed that mere hunger for bread into a hunger for happiness. They
were the poor, and the poor are God’s chosen people. For that reason
they must wander in the desert, and must blindly ask: “Where is the
Promised Land?” But the gleam of which the faithful followed was not
earthly happiness! God himself led them to and fro until their hunger
was purged and became the true hunger—the hunger of the soul for
eternal happiness!

They did not understand much of what he said; but his words set free
something within them, so that they engaged in lively conversation over
everyday things. But suddenly the buzz of conversation was silenced; a
little hunchbacked man had clambered up on a bench and was looking them
over with glittering eyes. This was Sort, the traveling shoemaker from
the outer suburb.

“We want to be glad and merry,” he said, assuming a droll expression;
“God’s children are always glad, however much evil they have to fight
against, and they can meet with no misfortune—God is Joy!” He began to
laugh, as boisterously as a child, and they all laughed with him; one
infected the next. They could not control themselves; it was as though
an immense merriment had overwhelmed them all. The little children
looked at the grown-ups and laughed, till their little throats began to
cough with laughing. “He’s a proper clown!” said the men to their
wives, their own faces broad with laughter, “but he’s got a good
heart!”

On the bench next to Pelle sat a silent family, a man and wife and
three children, who breathed politely through their raw little noses.
The parents were little people, and there was a kind of inward deftness
about them, as though they were continually striving to make themselves
yet smaller. Pelle knew them a little, and entered into conversation
with them. The man was a clay-worker, and they lived in one of the
miserable huts near the “Great Power’s” home.

“Yes, that is true—that about happiness,” said the wife. “Once we too
used to dream of getting on in the world a little, so that we might be
sure of our livelihood; and we scraped a little money together, that
some good people lent us, and we set up in a little shop, and I kept it
while father went to work. But it wouldn’t answer; no one supported us,
and we got poorer goods because we were poor, and who cares about
dealing with very poor people? We had to give it up, and we were deeply
in debt, and we’re still having to pay it off—fifty öre every week, and
there we shall be as long as we live, for the interest is always
mounting up. But we are honorable people, thank God!” she concluded.
The man took no part in the conversation.

Her last remark was perhaps evoked by a man who had quietly entered the
hall, and was now crouching on a bench in the background; for he was
not an honorable man. He had lived on a convict’s bread and water; he
was “Thieving Jacob,” who about ten years earlier had smashed in the
window of Master Jeppe’s best room and had stolen a pair of
patent-leather shoes for his wife. He had heard of a rich man who had
given his betrothed such a pair of shoes, and he wanted to see what it
was like, just for once, to give a really fine present—a present worth
as much as one would earn in two weeks. This he had explained before
the court. “Numbskull!” said Jeppe always, when the conversation
touched upon Jacob; “for such a miserable louse suddenly to get a
swollen head, to want to make big presents! And if it had been for his
young woman even—but for his wife! No, he paid the penalty to the very
last day—in spite of Andres.”

Yes, he certainly had to pay the penalty! Even here no one would sit
next to him! Pelle looked at him and wondered that his own offence
should be so little regarded. The remembrance of it now only lay in
people’s eyes when they spoke to him. But at this moment Smith Dam went
and sat next to Thieving Jacob, and they sat hand-in-hand and
whispered.

And over yonder sat some one who nodded to Pelle—in such a friendly
manner; it was the woman of the dancing-shoes; her young man had left
her, and now she was stranded here—her dancing days were over. Yet she
was grateful to Pelle; the sight of him had recalled delightful
memories; one could see that by the expression of her eyes and mouth.

Pelle’s own temper was softened as he sat there. Something melted
within him; a quiet and humble feeling of happiness came over him.
There was still one human being who believed herself in Pelle’s debt,
although everything had gone wrong for her.

As the meeting was breaking up, at half-past nine, she was standing in
the street, in conversation with another woman. She came up to Pelle,
giving him her hand. “Shall we walk a little way together?” she asked
him. She evidently knew of his circumstances; he read compassion in her
glance. “Come with me,” she said, as their ways parted. “I have a scrap
of sausage that’s got to be eaten. And we are both of us lonely.”

Hesitatingly he went with her, a little hostile, for the occasion was
new and unfamiliar. But once he was seated in her little room he felt
thoroughly at ease. Her white, dainty bed stood against the wall. She
went to and fro about the room, cooking the sausage at the stove, while
she opened her heart to him, unabashed.

It isn’t everybody would take things so easily! thought Pelle, and he
watched her moving figure quite happily.

They had a cheerful meal, and Pelle wanted to embrace her in his
gratitude, but she pushed his hands away. “You can keep that for
another time!” she said, laughing. “I’m a poor old widow, and you are
nothing but a child. If you want to give me pleasure, why, just settle
down and come to yourself again. It isn’t right that you should be just
loafing about and idling, and you so young and such a nice boy. And now
go home, for I must get up early to-morrow and go to my work.”

Pelle visited her almost every evening. She had a disagreeable habit of
shaking him out of his slumber, but her simple and unchanging manner of
accepting and enduring everything was invigorating. Now and again she
found a little work for him, and was always delighted when she could
share her poor meal with him. “Any one like myself feels a need of
seeing a man-body at the table-end once in a while,” she said. “But
hands off—you don’t owe me anything!”

She criticized his clothes. “They’ll all fall off your body soon— why
don’t you put on something else and let me see to them?”

“I have nothing but these,” said Pelle, ashamed.

On Saturday evening he had to take off his rags, and creep, mother-
naked, into her bed. She would take no refusal, and she took shirt and
all, and put them into a bucket of water. It took her half the night to
clean everything. Pelle lay in bed watching her, the coverlet up to his
chin. He felt very strange. As for her, she hung the whole wash to dry
over the stove, and made herself a bed on a couple of chairs. When he
woke up in the middle of the morning she was sitting by the window
mending his clothes.

“But what sort of a night did you have?” asked Pelle, a trifle
concerned.

“Excellent! Do you know what I’ve thought of this morning? You ought to
give up your room and stay here until you are on your feet again
—you’ve had a good rest—for once,” she smiled teasingly. “That room is
an unnecessary expense. As you see, there’s room here for two.”

But Pelle would not agree. He would not hear of being supported by a
woman. “Then people will believe that there’s something wrong between
us—and make a scandal of it,” he said.

“Let them then!” she answered, with her gay laugh. “If I’ve a good
conscience it’s indifferent to me what others think.” While she was
talking she was working diligently at his linen, and she threw one
article after another at his head. Then she ironed his suit. “Now
you’re quite a swell again!” she said, when he stood up dressed once
more, and she looked at him affectionately. “It’s as though you had
become a new creature. If I were only ten or fifteen years younger I’d
be glad to go down the street on your arm. But you shall give me a
kiss—I’ve put you to rights again, as if you were my own child.” She
kissed him heartily and turned about to the stove.

“And now I’ve got no better advice than that we have some cold dinner
together and then go our ways,” she said, with her back still turned.
“All my firing has been used overnight to dry your things, and you
can’t stay here in the cold. I think I can pay a visit somewhere or
other, and so the day will pass; and you can find some corner to put
yourself in.’

“It’s all the same to me where I am,” said Pelle indifferently.

She looked at him with a peculiar smile. “Are you really always going
to be a loafer?” she said. “You men are extraordinary creatures! If
anything at all goes wrong with you, you must start drinking right
away, or plunge yourself into unhappiness in some other way—you are no
better than babies! We must work quietly on, however things go with
us!” She stood there hesitating in her hat and cloak. “Here’s
five-and-twenty öre,” she said; “that’s just for a cup of coffee to
warm you!”

Pelle would not accept it. “What do I want with your money?” he said.
“Keep it yourself!”

“Take it, do! I know it’s only a little, but I have no more, and
there’s no need for us to be ashamed of being helped by one another.”
She put the coin in his jacket pocket and hurried off.

Pelle strolled out to the woods. He did not feel inclined to go home,
to resume the aimless battle with Ström. He wandered along the deserted
paths, and experienced a feeble sense of well-being when he noticed
that the spring was really coming. The snow was still lying beneath the
old moss-gray pinetrees, but the toadstools were already thrusting
their heads up through the pine-needles, and one had a feeling, when
walking over the ground, as though one trod upon rising dough.

He found himself pondering over his own affairs, and all of a sudden he
awoke out of his half-slumber. Something had just occurred to him,
something cozy and intimate—why, yes, it was the thought that he might
go to Marie and set up for himself, like Jens and his girl. He could
get hold of a few lasts and sit at home and work … he could scrape
along for a bit, until better times came. She earned something too, and
she was generous.

But when he thought over the matter seriously it assumed a less
pleasant aspect. He had already sufficiently abused her poverty and her
goodness of heart. He had taken her last scrap of firing, so that she
was now forced to go out in order to get a little warmth and some
supper. The idea oppressed him. Now that his eyes were opened he could
not escape this feeling of shame. It went home and to bed with him, and
behind all her goodness he felt her contempt for him, because he did
not overcome his misery by means of work, like a respectable fellow.

On the following morning he was up early, and applied for work down at
the harbor. He did not see the necessity of work in the abstract, but
he would not be indebted to a woman. On Sunday evening he would repay
her outlay over him and his clothes.

XXIV

Pelle stood on the floor of the basin, loading broken stone into the
tip-wagons. When a wagon was full he and his comrade pushed it up to
the head of the track, and came gliding back hanging to the empty
wagons. Now and again the others let fall their tools, and looked
across to where he stood; he was really working well for a cobbler! And
he had a fine grip when it came to lifting the stone. When he had to
load a great mass of rock into the wagon, he would lift it first to his
knee, then he would let out an oath and put his whole body into it; he
would wipe the sweat from his forehead and take a dram of brandy or a
drop of beer. He was as good as any of the other men!

He did not bother himself with ideas; two and two might make five for
all he cared; work and fatigue were enough for him. Hard work had made
his body supple and filled him with a sense of sheer animal well-being.
“Will my beer last out the afternoon to-day?” he would wonder; beyond
that nothing mattered. The future did not exist, nor yet the painful
feeling that it did not exist; there was no remorse in him for what he
had lost, or what he had neglected; hard work swallowed up everything
else. There was only this stone that had to be removed—and then the
next! This wagon which had to be filled— and then the next! If the
stone would not move at the first heave he clenched his teeth; he was
as though possessed by his work. “He’s still fresh to harness,” said
the others; “he’ll soon knock his horns off!” But Pelle wanted to show
his strength; that was his only ambition. His mate let him work away in
peace and did not fatigue himself. From time to time he praised Pelle,
in order to keep his steam up.

This work down at the harbor was the hardest and lowest kind of labor;
any one could get taken on for it without previous qualifications. Most
of Pelle’s comrades were men who had done with the world, who now let
themselves go as the stream carried them, and he felt at ease among
them. He stood on the solid ground, and no words had power to call the
dead past to life; it had power to haunt only an empty brain. An iron
curtain hung before the future; happiness lay here to his hand; the
day’s fatigue could straightway be banished by joyous drinking.

His free time he spent with his companions. They led an unsettled,
roving life; the rumor that extensive works were to be carried out had
enticed them hither. Most were unmarried; a few had wives and children
somewhere, but held their tongues about them, or no longer remembered
their existence, unless reminded by something outside themselves. They
had no proper lodgings, but slept in Carrier Köller’s forsaken barn,
which was close to the harbor. They never undressed, but slept in the
straw, and washed in a bucket of water that was seldom changed; their
usual diet consisted of stale bread, and eggs, which they grilled over
a fire made between two stones.

The life pleased Pelle, and he liked the society. On Sundays they ate
and drank alternately, all day long, and lay in the smoke-filled barn;
burrowing deep into the straw, they told stories, tragic stories of
youngest sons who seized an axe and killed their father and mother, and
all their brothers and sisters, because they thought they were being
cheated of their share of their inheritance! Of children who attended
confirmation class, and gave way to love, and had children themselves,
and were beheaded for what they did! And of wives who did not wish to
bring into the world the children it was their duty to bear, and whose
wombs were closed as punishment!

Since Pelle had begun to work here he had never been out to see Marie
Nielsen. “She’s making a fool of you,” said the others, to whom he had
spoken of Marie; “she’s playing the respectable so that you shall bite.
Women have always got second thoughts—it’s safest to be on the lookout.
They and these young widows would rather take two than one—they’re the
worst of all. A man must be a sturdy devil to be able to stand up
against them.”

But Pelle was a man, and would allow no woman to lead him by the nose.
Either you were good friends and no fuss about it, or nothing. He’d
tell her that on Saturday, and throw ten kroner on the table— then they
would sure enough be quits! And if she made difficulties she’d get one
over the mouth! He could not forgive her for using all her firing, and
having to pass Sunday in the street; the remembrance would not leave
him, and it burned like an angry spark. She wanted to make herself out
a martyr.

One day, about noon, Pelle was standing among the miners on the floor
of the basin; Emil and he had just come from the shed, where they had
swallowed a few mouthfuls of dinner. They had given up their midday
sleep in order to witness the firing of a big blast during the midday
pause when the harbor would be empty. The whole space was cleared, and
the people in the adjacent houses had opened their windows so that they
should not be shattered by the force of the explosion.

The fuse was lit, and the men took shelter behind the caissons, and
stood there chatting while they waited for the explosion. The “Great
Power” was there too. He was always in the neighborhood; he would stand
and stare at the workers with his apathetic expression, without taking
part in anything. They took no notice of him, but let him move about as
he pleased. “Take better cover, Pelle,” said Emil; “it’s going off
directly!”

“Where are Olsen and Ström?” said some one suddenly. The men looked at
one another bewildered.

“They’ll be taking their midday sleep,” said Emil. “They’ve been
drinking something chronic this morning.”

“Where are they sleeping?” roared the foreman, and he sprang from his
cover. They all had a foreboding, but no one wanted to say. It flashed
across them that they must do something. But no one stirred. “Lord
Jesus!” said Bergendal, and he struck his fist against the stone wall.
“Lord Jesus!”

The “Great Power” sprang from his shelter and ran along the side of the
basin, taking long leaps from one mass of rock to the next, his mighty
wooden shoes clattering as he went. “He’s going to tear the fuse away!”
cried Bergendal. “He’ll never reach it—it must be burnt in!” There was
a sound as of a cry of distress, far above the heads of those who heard
it. They breathlessly followed the movements of the “Great Power”; they
had come completely out of shelter. In Pelle an irrational impulse
sprang into being. He made a leap forward, but was seized by the scruff
of the neck. “One is enough,” said Bergendal, and he threw him back.

Now the “Great Power” had reached the goal. His hand was stretched out
to seize the fuse. Suddenly he was hurled away from the fuse, as though
by an invisible hand, and was swept upward and backward through the
air, gently, like a human balloon, and fell on his back. Then the roar
of the explosion drowned everything.

When the last fragments had fallen the men ran forward. The “Great
Power” lay stretched upon his back, looking quietly up at the sky. The
corners of his mouth were a little bloody and the blood trickled from a
hole behind the ear. The two drunken men were scathless. They rose to
their feet, bewildered, a few paces beyond the site of the explosion.
The “Great Power” was borne into the shed, and while the doctor was
sent for Emil tore a strip from his blouse, and soaked it in brandy,
and laid it behind the ear.

The “Great Power” opened his eyes and looked about him. His glance was
so intelligent that every one knew that he had not long to live.

“It smells of brandy here,” he said. “Who will stand me a drop?” Emil
reached him the bottle, and he emptied it. “It tastes good,” he said
easily. “Now I haven’t touched brandy for I don’t know how long, but
what was the good? The poor man must drink brandy, or he’s good for
nothing; it is no joke being a poor man! There is no other salvation
for him; that you have seen by Ström and Olsen—drunken men never come
to any harm. Have they come to any harm?” He tried to raise his head.
Ström stepped forward. “Here we are,” he said, his voice stifled with
emotion. “But I’d give a good deal to have had us both blown to hell
instead of this happening. None of us has wished you any good!” He held
out his hand.

But the “Great Power” could not raise his; he lay there, staring up
through the holes in the thatched roof. “It has been hard enough,
certainly, to belong to the poor,” he said, “and it’s a good thing it’s
all over. But you owe me no thanks. Why should I leave you in the lurch
and take everything for myself—would that be like the ‘Great Power’? Of
course, the plan was mine! But could I have carried it out alone? No,
money does everything. You’ve fairly deserved it! The ‘Great Power’
doesn’t want to have more than any one else—where we have all done an
equal amount of work.” He raised his hand, painfully, and made a
magnanimous gesture.

“There—he believes he’s the engineer of the harbor works!” said Ström.
“He’s wandering. Wouldn’t a cold application do him good?” Emil took
the bucket in order to fetch fresh water. The “Great Power” lay with
closed eyes and a faint smile on his face; he was like a blind man who
is listening. “Do you understand,” he said, without opening his eyes,
“how we have labored and labored, and yet have been barely able to earn
our daily bread? The big people sat there and ate up everything that we
could produce; when we laid down our tools and wanted to still our
hunger there was nothing. They stole our thoughts, and if we had a
pretty sweetheart or a young daughter they could do with her too—they
didn’t disdain our cripple even. But now that’s done with, and we will
rejoice that we have lived to see it; it might have gone on for a long
time. Mother wouldn’t believe what I told her at all—that the bad days
would soon be over. But now just see! Don’t I get just as much for my
work as the doctor for his? Can’t I keep my wife and daughter neat and
have books and get myself a piano, just as he can? Isn’t it a great
thing to perform manual labor too? Karen has piano lessons now, just as
I’ve always wished, for she’s weakly and can’t stand any hard work. You
should just come home with me and hear her play—she does it so easily
too! Poor people’s children have talent too, it’s just that no one
notices it.”

“God, how he talks!” said Ström, crying. “It’s almost as if he had the
delirium.”

Pelle bent down over the “Great Power.” “Now you must be good and be
quiet,” he said, and laid something wet on his forehead. The blood was
trickling rapidly from behind his ear.

“Let him talk,” said Olsen. “He hasn’t spoken a word for months now; he
must feel the need to clear his mind this once. It’ll be long before he
speaks again, too!”

Now the “Great Power” was only weakly moving his lips. His life was
slowly bleeding away. “Have you got wet, little Karen?” he murmured.
“Ah, well, it’ll dry again! And now it’s all well with you, now you
can’t complain. Is it fine to be a young lady? Only tell me everything
you want. Why be modest? We’ve been that long enough! Gloves for the
work-worn fingers, yes, yes. But you must play something for me too.
Play that lovely song: ‘On the joyful journey through the lands of
earth….’ That about the Eternal Kingdom!”

Gently he began to hum it; he could no longer keep time by moving his
head, but he blinked his eyes in time; and now his humming broke out
into words.

Something irresistibly impelled the others to sing in concert with him;
perhaps the fact that it was a religious song. Pelle led them with his
clear young voice; and it was he who best knew the words by heart.

“Fair, fair is earth,
And glorious Heaven;