In the narrow streets the snow lay a good two feet deep. Walls, window frames and doorways were clogged with driven snow. And cold rose from everything. White is always cold, be it snow or linen—one’s vestment on Judgment Day. Yes, even the flower of the bird cherry, the daisy, and the chickweed wintergreen, as it stands there in the sun and the warm air, is cold—it is the soul of whiteness that is cold.

The old grey men who had said farewell to the mines and the smeltery now got down their thick, patched, winter attire from the clothes loft and put it on. There was no prospect that the snow would disappear again this year. The fields were long since deep frozen and one could drive across the marshes, the lakes, and the tarns. To go and long for more sun, spring, and mild weather—no, that was futile, to that longing there would be no end. It was better to give up at once and let oneself be snowed up and frozen in. If only man and beast had enough food! Starvation was the worst thing of all to contemplate. One could perhaps reconcile oneself to grown‐up people being hungry, going to bed hungry and getting up hungry; but to have to look on while the children became paler and thinner every day, that was a tragedy. And to have to lie awake during the long dark nights and hear the beasts in the cow barn and the stable bellowing because of empty bellies, that was not much better either.

No, nobody could know what trials and tribulations the winter would bring. The war continued, too, both at home and abroad.

Mine secretary Dopp was now well informed on what was going on in the world outside. He too now subscribed to the newspapers which were printed in Christiania. Ol‐Kanelesa, too, was informed. He borrowed Dopp’s newspapers and read everything. Yes, Ol‐Kanelesa was a reader. The Scriptures never stumped him. He was more of a bookworm than any parson.

Benjamin Sigismund had once again put away his outdoorp. 177 attire. He spent the day visiting the sick and the dying. He read from the Holy Scriptures in a clear, soft voice, adapting the text for the poor in spirit so that its truth became as clear to them as the light of day. In the Scriptures and in the sacraments he had received the keys of heaven. Should he then withhold entry to any? He prayed on his knees with those who prayed. He prayed as if for the salvation of his own soul.

Day after day he went out to the suffering. And he concerned himself not only with their spiritual sufferings but also with their physical ones. He tended and bandaged wounds and brought healing herbs for aches and pains—for such were the things a good samaritan ought to do. The whole of humanity, himself included, had fallen amongst thieves: the multiplicity of our sins! Everyone needed oil poured into their wounds.

. . . The twenty‐first of November.

That day was remembered for generations to come because of the frost. Pine stems cracked in the forests, and blackened magpies lay in the streets of Bergstaden—they had fallen down stone‐dead from the edge of the chimney stacks where they had tried to warm themselves in the smoke from the peat. In the cow barns and in the stables, cows and horses stood, hanging their heads and shivering. And in the low‐timbered cottages people sat huddled together in front of the fireplace. The old people, who had the thinnest blood in their veins, put on old skin coats, dried up and shrunken. They could with quavering voice tell of the cold in days gone by, too; they were gloomy and ghastly tales.

Benjamin Sigismund woke feeling frozen. Was it the cold of the plague? Quickly he felt his pulse, but there was nothing quick or violent about it. Then he understood that it was the cold in the air. Presently, he heard Kathryn call from her room.

“Benjamin, I’m so cold—”

And presently the children called out:

“Papa! Mummy! Are you awake? We’re so cold, we are too.”

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“Get into the same bed,” Benjamin Sigismund called out. And it was done. The boys got into their mother’s bed.

Sigismund jumped up. The cold pierced the soles of his feet like sharp knives. A feeling of wild terror gripped him. Had the earth been changed to ice and enveloped in eternal darkness? After much groping along the wall, he finally got hold of the outdoor clothes out in the hail and spread them over Kathryn and the boys.

“Where is our tinder box, Kathryn?”

“It’s up on the mantlepiece.”

She could hear that her husband was not in a good humor. He was always so jumpy when his sleep was disturbed. Nevertheless, since the party at Director Knoph’s Benjamin had been kind and amenable. That, too, had contributed much to the improvement of her chest and making her feel more lighthearted. Goodness was life‐giving nourishment for her. It was balsam, manna in the desert.

Benjamin Sigismund could not find the tinder box. He knocked a brass candlestick on the floor. Angrily he shouted:

“There’s no tinderbox here!”

“I’ll get up and look myself, Benjamin.”

“Lie still,” he ordered. “I’ll find it, I dare say.”

He felt around the mantlepiece. Now a copper jug fell on the floor. Angrily he kicked at it, but hit the leg of a chair—it was laughably painful, and made him grasp his toes and jump around on one leg, grimacing.

“Why don’t you put things in their proper place! Are you still cold in there?”

No, it was better now. Laurentius’s back was a little cold, that was all.

“Good!”

He jumped back into bed again but that, too, had become icy cold.

“Ow!” He was up again. Now he had to find the tinderbox. He knocked down more things from the mantlepiece and clattered over chairs, but the tinderbox, no! It had disappeared. And so he was forced back into bed for a second time. Hep. 179 pulled the sheepskin blanket over his head and tried to breathe underneath it. In that way he got some warmth into his body again. Now he became tired, dozy. His eyes closed slowly.

A bad dream, a sort of nightmare, began to torment him. It seemed to him that he had been put into one of the deeper mine galleries at the Works. Round about him a cold darkness brooded, a slippery, thick blackness. It penetrated his clothes, his body, and took possession of his soul. Now, it was slowly and painfully prizing his soul out of him. It couldn’t be stopped. Yes, one thing could stop it: light; a strong, blinding light! But there was no light here, there had never been any. Never had a beam of the sun shone on these barren rocks. They lay here full of cold and darkness. And thus they would continue to lie until the Day of Judgment, when heaven and the earth would be ignited and come ablaze. If only he had a lamp. If nothing more than a smoky wick. He was completely in the power of this terrible darkness. In his terror he began to call for light: “Lord! Lord! Send in thy mercy a ray of thy sun.” His fearful cries were echoed back from the rocks. No one was at hand. No one heard. God had hidden His face. And in this fear he awoke, clammy and sweating over the whole of his body. And to his joy he noticed that there was now a light somewhere. Where it came from he couldn’t decide. Was it a magical light which could shine through sticks and stones? He sat up in bed and looked around with confused eyes.

Yes, there it was. The sun was shining down through the chimney. It was shining on the rime‐covered stones of the hearth. But the rays of the sun were so cold that the frost didn’t melt.

God be praised, it was again day. The Lord’s bright day! He jumped out of bed and dressed quickly. It was still icy cold but it didn’t feel so terrible any longer. He found the tinderbox lying on a chair in front of the bed. He had put it there so as to have it to hand. How could he have forgotten it? That sort of thing mustn’t happen again. And with greatp. 180 strength and determination he lifted the steel and struck. The hard flint promptly produced some blue sparks, but he couldn’t catch these in the tinder. He struck again. Hard and with determination—but no.

Then the door opened. And a man came in, with silent footsteps and miserably undersized. He was clad in furs, grey deerskin. On his head he had a pointed cap with blue and red beads. He dragged a stick, longer than he was tall, through the doorway and put it down carefully on the floor.

“’Morning!” the man said, and bared his teeth.

Sigismund couldn’t decide whether it was a smile or pain he saw in the man’s twisted face.

“Be you our pastor?”

“Yes. What do you want?”

Sigismund remained sitting on the hearth with the tinderbox in his hand. Where had he seen this deformed creature before? Yes! Now he remembered him, he was the man he had met on his first morning in Bergstaden; the first morning when he met Gunhild.

He saw again a picture of Bergstaden and her, just as he had seen it on that spring morning.

Yes, that spring morning! It seemed to him to be so eternally long ago, although there was only a summer and an autumn between then and now.

Years could become days, and days could become years; time could not always be measured in hours and dates and years, but with heavenly joy and gladness, longing and woe. At this moment Benjamin Sigismund measured time in the last of these ways. To measure it in that way was to change hours and days to years. It seemed to him that he had known this Lapp from the beginning of time. He forgot that this man had stood and laughed and called after him, indeed, had made a fool of him in public. He felt on the contrary an inexplicable goodwill towards this stone‐like creature. He could lift him up and put him on his knee, and pat his bushy black hair; it was as stiff and wiry as a horse’s tail. He had once seen hairp. 181 of that sort on an idol. Then, he had felt the deepest repugnance at it; but now it was quite the opposite. Oh, no one was always the same. Yes, one was: the All Highest! But man was inconstant and always fickle from cradle to grave. He gave the flint a new blow with the steel.

“Me make fire for you,” the mannikin said. “Me do it!”

Benjamin Sigismund gave him the tinderbox and the Lapp struck the flint and ignited the tinder at one go. In a short while the fire was burning on the hearth. The Lapp even got the frozen wet wood to burn. The whole time he stood with his face in the smoke and mumbled. Was it some heathen incantation? He was also making some very mysterious signs and gestures with his arms over the fire.

“What are you doing, my man?” Benjamin Sigismund called out, “Are you calling up the fire?”

The Lapp stared uncomprehendingly at the pastor. He didn’t understand.

“Eh?” he shrieked in his singsong voice. “Eh! Eh!”

Was the man standing there laughing? It was the sound of laughter, but his face expressed sorrow, suffering. What was he trying to say?

“Is there anything you want?”

The Lapp didn’t understand that either. He looked quite helplessly at the pastor.

“No understand what pastor say.”

Then, like lightning he bent down, groped for his long stick, dragged it with him out of the door and disappeared.

Benjamin Sigismund sat and stared after him. What did the dwarf want? Was he a being of this world? Superstition! He made a peremptory gesture with his hand. Nothing but superstitionsuperstitution! He put more wood on the fire. And then he warmed himself on all sides until he was warm all through.

There was sun in the fire. Sun, gathered up and preserved. Especially in the pitch of the pinewood—there was much sun there. He would buy more cords of pinewood. Then they could have a fire in the hearth the whole night and protectp. 182 themselves against the dark and the cold. Not only their bodies, but also they could keep their souls pure of darkness in that way; for darkness was impure. It was the enemy of God, the soul and sphere of the Devil.

The ice patterns on the window now began to melt. The sun itself breathed with its red mouth on them from the other side of the window panes. And it dripped springlike from the lead‐lights down on to the rotten window frame.

What sort of life was Gunhild living now? He never dared ask anybody about it. Not even to Ole Korneliusen did he dare put such a question. Every time that greying wise man came up to his study, or when they met in the choir of the church, he felt a violent urge to greet him with, “Have you seen anything of Gunhild Finne recently?” But every time it was as if his tongue was nailed to the roof of his mouth. Was then this question so great a sin, since the Lord every time struck him with dumbness? How often had he not laid this matter on the scalepan of his conscience. And sometimes the scale dipped one way and sometimes another. He had also prayed to God for a sign to guide him but he had received no sign. Was it that his Lord would give him no sign other than that which was written in the Holy Scriptures? Did he in no wise desire Gunhild? No, it was a lie! He desired her!

He jumped up from the hearth.

No, in no wise did he desire her. Another lie! His whole soul was ablaze with desire for this woman. All his longing was for her.

No! No! He didn’t feel it in that way. His desire was not coarse and earthly. . . . He had seen nothing of her at church since the party at Knoph’s. For what reason did she stay away? Every pew in the church was taken, the common people stood tightly packed all up the nave and up in the galleries—nonetheless, to him the great church was quite empty when Gunhild was not sitting down there.

But she was right to stay away. Yes, but she must come once more. Just once more. Then he would speak so that thep. 183 very walls would weep. He would storm the gates of heaven. The golden gates of heaven.

The door opened. The dwarf stood there again with his long stick. Ol‐Kanelesa came with him.

“Good morning, sacristan,” Benjamin Sigismund called out. “It is a long time since you were last here. How is Gunhild Bonde?”

Now it was done. The word which was spoken couldn’t be taken back.

Ol‐Kanelesa started. And he took his time before he answered. Finally, he caught hold of his chin and looked up at Benjamin Sigismund.

“Gunhild? She’s sitting there moping the one day like the next.”

“What, is Gunhild still unhappy?”

“She’s having a bad time,” Ol‐Kanelesa said straight out. “She should have said no up at the church, that she should.”

“Yes, yes. Naturally that would have been the only right thing, Ole Korneliusen.”

The pastor sank down on the curb of the fireplace. So, she was having a bad time. He felt quite dizzy with sorrow and grief over it—no, dizzy with joy, of a quite inexplicable joy. She was having a bad time. Perhaps she was thinking about him?

“Must hurry, our Klætta wait for pastor,” the Lapp mumbled.

“Your Reverence,” Ol‐Kanelesa began.

Benjamin Sigismund didn’t hear. He asked:

“And have you talked to her recently?”

“Yes, last night.”

“Last night?”

“Yes. But you must go on a sick visit, pastor. There’s a Lapp girl who’s dying up in the mountains.”

“What do you say, Ole? Is somebody dying?”

Now Ol‐Kanelesa explained briefly that the wife of the Lapp, Nils from Bu, lay dying up at Flensmarken.

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“Is your wife so ill?” Sigismund said to the Lapp; but he only looked questioningly up at Ol‐Kanelesa. “What pastor say?”

“Your wife, Nils. Very sick?” Ol‐Kanelesa said.

“She die.”

Benjamin Sigismund couldn’t see any particular anxiety in the Lapp’s face.

“How old is she?”

Ol‐Kanelesa had to translate that, too.

“Two and twenty. Two and twenty, one week from Michaelmas.”

“What! Twenty‐two?”

Ol‐Kanelesa nodded. She was no older than that.

“And you, Lapp?”

“Four and seventy.”

“And now she shall die and you live?” Benjamin Sigismund said. And added in a conciliatory tone: “Yes, yes. We mustn’t call Him to account about that. His ways are not our ways. . . . You will come as interpreter, Ole Korneliusen, will you not?”

“If I can help to open up the gates for a despairing soul, then I must try.”

When Benjamin Sigismund, dressed in a fur coat and Lapp shoes which Leich had lent him, was going out of the gateway, Gunhild stood there.

She didn’t greet him. The cold and the gold of the morning sun made her unusually beautiful, although she was tired and hadn’t slept.

“Gunhild,” Benjamin Sigismund said, and went up to her and took her hand. “Why don’t you come to church any more, Gunhild.”

“Do you want to see me there, then?”

“Yes! Yes!” He held her hand tightly. “It’s just there I want to see you.”

A sledge swung up to the door at a trot. Sigismund climbed hurriedly on to it. Ol‐Kanelesa followed, carrying a smallp. 185 wooden box. They went at a trot along the whole of the main street. Everything happened so quickly that Benjamin Sigismund didn’t even manage to say goodbye to Gunhild, who stood there, thinly clad and cold. She stood alone for a while, looking at the disappearing sledge. And then she began to walk—to walk with long steps along the track of the sledge right up to the smeltery. There she turned and walked quickly down again. She had nowhere to go.

Up at the Hitter Lake, Ol‐Kanelesa said:

“It’s cold today, your Reverence.”

Benjamin Sigismund made no answer to that. He said:

“I asked her to come to church, Ole.”

“Who?”

“She.”

“Gunhild?”

The pastor nodded. For him Gunhild Finne had become she, the only one.

And then they were both silent for a long time. Ol‐Kanelesa sat covering his face with his woollen mittens. There was a searing cold wind. He couldn’t remember that he had ever known it colder. The peasant, whose sledge it was, sat behind on the back seat and drew his head down in the collar of his fur coat—but Benjamin Sigismund sat with his head upright. His great eyebrows became white with hoarfrost, and the hair which stuck out by his ears curled up grey and frozen over his temples.

Ol‐Kanelesa couldn’t understand that the pastor didn’t get frostbite. He watched closely to see whether any white patches appeared on Sigismund’s face, the sign of frostbite. Then he would have to rub snow on it.

No, Sigismund felt neither the cold nor the biting wind. He drove recklessly with tight reins. And the world, that old wicked world, was at this moment beautiful and wondrous top. 186 live in. Look at the birch trees along the edge of the lake. Every twig burned with a white light. Light which radiated from the living flame in the interior of the stem. The stone markers they drove past on the ice also had their light. And the snow! Tinted scarlet red by the sun, it was a carpet rolled out over forest, rocks, and frozen water.

He cracked the whip in the air. The horse threw up ice and snow from its shining iron shoes around the ears of the three people on the sledge.

Then the large hands of the peasant gripped the reins and held them back:

“You’re not driving my horse to death, pastor!”

Benjamin Sigismund looked up amazed. The peasant on the back seat had brought him back from fairyland. Now he, too, began to feel the cold. It cut his ears, and made his hands so stiff that he could scarcely move a finger. And only now did he see the snow: cold and unending; Death’s great winding sheet.

“What is the man saying, Ole Korneliusen?”

“He thinks your Reverence is driving mighty fast.”

“No doubt we are driving quickly, but do you not think that Death drives even quicker?”

“Yes, well yes,” Ol‐Kanelesa said thoughtfully. “He drives at his own pace. Whether he drives quick or slow there’s not much use our trying to compete with him, is there?”

The pastor tore the reins out of the peasant’s hands. And the whip cracked once again. He permitted no interference whatsoever. Wasn’t the redemption of a soul more important than anything?

Now Nils the Lapp was catching up with them. He was driving a reindeer sleigh. He hollered and gesticulated with his arms and whizzed past like an arrow.

“Go, go, pastor!” he shouted. “Klaætta wait.”

The peasant on the back seat, a wiry‐haired, red‐bearded man from Malmagen, made new protestations. It wasn’t going to help him to have his horse lamed. “Whoa there, whoa!” Hep. 187 had driven with road surveyor von Krogh between Malmagen and Bergstaden plenty of times, and he was a swine to drive, too, but even he didn’t drive that crazily. Perhaps the pastor would pay for the horse?

“How much do you want for your miserable nag, my man?”

“How much? I must have seven rix‐dollars for it.”

“Well, we are soon agreed on that price.”

Sigismund was excited. Now the whip really began to crack in the air. And it was easy to see that it wasn’t the first time he had a pair of reins between his hands. The horse reared, threw itself against the shafts, and off along the lakes they went.

Ol‐Kanelesa and the peasant from Malmagen exchanged furtive glances; but neither of them had any great desire to speak to the pastor. It was really Ol‐Kanelesa who approved such conduct least of all. There was no certainty that our Lord would overlook the wrongs we had done to animals. We had to remember that He hadn’t given them tongues to speak with. The peasant, on the other hand, was content with the thought of the seven rix‐dollars. He could get a reasonably serviceable gelding for five; and it would be good to have two dollars in his purse when the land tax was due. Every time he thought of it, he came out in a sweat.

“If she is released from her chains, will her lucky star then rise, Ole Korneliusen?”

“Whose?”

“Gunhild’s.”

“Her. I thought you meant the Lapp girl.”

Ol‐Kanelesa sat there again for a long time and thought.

“I don’t know what would be the heaviest to bear, the shame or the chains, do you?”

“The shame? You mean what people would say?”

“Yes. One must be strong to bear that burden, too.”

“God’s judgment is heavier, Ole.”

Ol‐Kanelesa was silent.

After a while Benjamin Sigismund said, “Well, is your view different?”

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“I don’t know. He who is the righteous judge judges mercifully, doesn’t He?”

Then Sigismund was silent for a long time.

“You are right, you are certainly right. God judges in love, people in malice.”

The sun, the short day’s sun, which had burned like a great blazing fire over the tops of the pines, now began to glide down between the trunks. The blaze condensed into one big, glowing bonfire which threw a red flicker of fire onto their faces.

“Oh, what magnificence and glory,” Benjamin Sigismund said. “The merciful God is shining his great light on our countenance.”

Here in the desolation there were no tracks from horses or people, but away over on the flat moors was a broad track made by thousands of reindeer in the mild weather, and now frozen to ice.

To Benjamin Sigismund the whole journey was something unreal; it could well have been a dream. Before, he had always dreamt his beautiful dreams in the sunny morning hours when he was sitting in a chair, his cheek on his hand. The most beautiful came at the point when sleeping and waking met—they were the intoxicating ones. He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. Now his good friends, his blissful dreams, could come. Now they could come and lead his soul into their world, where friendly elves, the small servants of the angels, danced with flowered garlands in their hair and with gold harps in their white hands.

Idle fancies, adorned with the red roses of irresponsibility! How constant in its weakness was not the flesh we had inherited from Adam, right from that late evening hour when the two had wandered hand in hand out through the gate of Paradise, past the cherubim and with the dusk of the night on their faces!

He let the horse go at a walk. He folded his hands over the reins and prayed: “Lord, Thou who created us from the cold clay, perfect and in Thy image, that which we daily destroyp. 189 and cast asunder, do not in Thy mercy call us too hardly to account, for we are yet, in spite of all our faults and defects, Thy children, which through Christ’s suffering and death must be our certain hope and firm belief.”

They stopped at a Lapp hut on an open place in the pinewood. It was here Nils lived.

Nils opened the door, an untanned reindeer skin stretched over strips of wood from which the bark had been removed, and crept in.

Sigismund and Ol‐Kanelesa shook the snow off themselves and crept in after him. On a mat made of woven pine branches a young Lapp girl lay, her large eyes wide open. Beside her squatted an old woman. There was something demonic, shadowy, about this old woman which made Benjamin Sigismund start. Was she a being from the world of shadows? She let out some short howls. Did they express sorrow or malediction?

“What is your name?” he asked the sick girl, and put his hand over her heart. It had almost stopped beating.

“Klætta.”

“Klætta,” the old woman repeated.

“Klætta,” Ol‐Kanelesa said too. He saw that the pastor had not yet grasped the name.

“What does that mean, sacristan?”

“I suppose she was called after the mountain where she was born.”

Benjamin Sigismund turned to Ol‐Kanelesa and said in a low voice:

“Death has already done his work here. This young woman’s soul is on the threshold, ready to leave its earthly habitat. It is our duty to accompany her through the blackness of death with the glowing light of the Word and the Promise.”

And after a while he said:

“How like Gunhild Finne she is.”

Ol‐Kanelesa made a grimace. Was Sigismund thinking about Gunhild now, too? Yes, yes. It was no business of his. Everybody had eternally enough to do with scrutinizing himself. He merely said:

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“We’re all children of Adam.”

He, also, thought that she resembled someone: Ellen!

The pastor stood for a while holding the thin hand of the dying girl in his. What beauty cruel Death brought to the young! The pale light from Death’s lamp, the lamp he carries under his trailing cloak, and which he takes out now and again and shines on human faces—that weak and pale light which makes all living things start in mad terror, made at the same time all that was earthly disappear so that God’s image could come forth.

“Do you believe in God and in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ?”

Yes, but her sins were great, they were like the tall, dark mountains. All the days of her life had been full of misdeeds and mistakes.

To Benjamin Sigismund’s surprise she spoke Norwegian well, but her voice failed.

Would she then confess her transgressions?

Yes.

And did she wish to receive holy sacrament?

Yes.

Ol‐Kanelesa and the others went out. They sat down silently beside each other on a log outside the wall of the hut.

And on his knees beside Klætta’s bed the pastor heard her confession. She had married the old widower for his hut and animals. Her mother had for many years begged her way from valley to valley. Klætta didn’t want to inherit that. And she and Nils had had a child, a little boy. Fearful that the child should come to resemble its father, she had wished it dead while she was carrying it. God had not failed to punish her, the child was stillborn. Now the Devil was standing outside the wall of the hut, waiting for her. She had seen him several times today putting his head through the door opening to see whether she was dying. Last night and the whole of today she had tried to pray—but it was as if God was so far away.

Was that all? Were there not other sins? Yes, ten thousandp. 191 others too, but they were the sins we commit as often as we draw breath and take a step.

“Little friend,” Benjamin Sigismund said, and stroked her forehead. “In the name of Jesus Christ I promise you merciful forgiveness for all your sins.” And he continued: “Our Saviour, Thou who in Thy woe and suffering on the cross wast ready to take a robber, a murderer, a wretch who had transgressed all God’s laws, by the hand and lead him in to Thy glory, come Thou to us and lead this erring soul over the dark waters of death and up to the new Jerusalem, the city whose squares resound to the blessed music of the harp. Let Thy holy angels hurry to meet her with palms, the sign of everlasting blessedness, the blessedness Thou grantest to all Thy redeemed. When Thou now stretchest out Thy sickle and cut down this mountain flower in the early morning hour of its life, then we know with full assurance that Thou in Thy inscrutable love hast destined it to be an even worthier and more beautiful adornment in Thy mansions.”

Sigismund got up and took the chalice and the communion plate out of the wooden box. His hands shook.

Then the dying girl whispered joyfully to herself, “Now I hear they are singing so beautifully in the mountains—they are singing around Langkjønna, round Klætten and over towards Viggela.”

He put down the chalice and the plate on the hearth and gripped her hand again, which was almost lifeless and cold now.

“Who is singing?”

“The angels are singing. Can you also hear them singing?”

“Yes.”

He could hear nothing but he had nevertheless to say yes. Yes, for the singing was there, he felt convinced of that. A song from the other side, from Paradise. It was just that he hadn’t the ears to hear it with.

Klætta tried to sit up. Her gaze was fixed in the far distance. And a smile in which the peace of God was reflected shone inp. 192 her large, staring eyes. She lay there with her head on her arm. She lay as if she were lying out on the moors asleep.

Now Sigismund opened the door and beckoned with his hand to those who sat outside. They came in, Ol‐Kanelesa, the Lapps, and the peasant, and took off their caps and stood round the fireplace, bending down under the low beams of the roof.

“Bend your knees. Verily, the Lord is here!”

Nobody did so. Silent and with their caps in their hands they stood there, like sharp shadows in the cold clear light which streamed in through the open door. As if to shun the light which came in, the old Lapp woman crept into a dark corner where some reindeer skins were hung up to dry and began to recite something—it sounded like an incantation, and only Nils understood it. He tried to silence her.

“Klætta dead? She dead, Ol‐Kanelesa?”

“She has left us now, Nils.”

The Lapp fell down on his knees by the hearth. It was as if an old dwarf birch was blown over and collapsed, joints and limbs creaked inside the hairy furskins. He thrust his head down in the ashes. And his fingers dug into the blackened stones like claws. And he began to howl. It sounded like a cry for help.

“Get up,” the pastor said severely. “The Lord has been good to your wife.”

Nils got up obediently. He sat down on a stone which jutted out from the hearth. His eyes were red and without tears. Perhaps he was weeping inside?

Ol‐Kanelesa laid out the dead girl on the twig mat and carefully closed her eyes. They heard the horse shaking itself in the shafts outside.

Then Benjamin Sigismund let the peasant help him on with his fur coat. And he offered Nils his hand.

“She has gone on ahead, into God’s glory. Try earnestly to find the same way. You, too, have not many steps to go before you stand at your own grave.”

He felt no sympathy for the old man. A marriage foundedp. 193 on the earthly lusts of a decrepit old man’s body was an abomination. And the pastor turned his back on Nils in disgust.

“What pastor say?” the Lapp asked, and grasped Ol‐Kanelesa by the arm of his coat.

“He says you must behave yourself so you can find the way Klætta has gone. You know that way is steep and hard to follow, Nils.”

“Klætta in heaven?” Nils asked.

“Yes,” Ol‐Kanelesa said. “She heard the angels singing.”

“Oh, Klætta in heaven.” Nils held his head. “Oh, Klætta in heaven.”

And when they had got up onto the sledge, the three of them, and drove away, they still heard the Lapp repeating:

“Oh, Klætta in heaven.”

The cold got gradually less as they approached Bergstaden. The sky was blue over the church and from the roof of the smeltery it was dripping; the dripping had its own spring‐like sound—the full moon came up and white quartz and shining ore glittered and glowed out over the whole of the smelting area.

At the entrance to the courtyard of Leich’s house, the pastor took out his pocket book and gave the peasant seven rix‐dollars.

“Eh?” the peasant said. “I don’t want to sell my horse, I’m blessed if I do!”

“It is my horse,” Sigismund said.

He took the horse out of the shafts, removed the harness, and threw it onto the empty sledge. And then without further ado he took the animal and led it by a tuft of hair on its head through the gate.

The peasant stood and stared after him. What a parson, had anyone seen the like?

Hour after hour Nils remained sitting on the hearth with his face hidden behind his crookedp. 194 fingers. He looked more like a dog than a human being just now, did old Nils.

The Plough, which Nils had looked up at on so many a winter night, now rolled with its glowing wheels over his turf‐covered hut. He didn’t look up at it any more. He pondered only one thing: was it true that Klætta was dead?

His mind grew more and more dark with the night. In a delirium he began to sing an old Lapp song that he had learned from his grandfather; his name was Nils, too.