It was the Saturday before All Souls’ Sunday.

The clock in the church tower had struck eight in the evening.

In David Finne’s cottage a tallow candle was burning with a long, black wick—but the brass scissors which lay on the foot of the candlestick remained untouched. The idle hands in there would do nothing about it. No, nothing. David, who sat with one elbow hanging loosely over the corner of the red‐painted table top with its bright‐worn iron rivets, didn’t notice that there was anything wrong with the candle. And his wife, Gunhild, who sat by the window, staring fixedly out into the darkness, made no attempt to get up and attend to it.

David Finne had now been accepted as an engineer apprentice at the Works. His capability and grasp of the work had accelerated his promotion. But, in spite of that, happiness was further away from him than ever—resentment, grief and a thousand miserable hours were his silent, cheerless companions. What good did his white coat and his leather apron do him? His cap, with the Works’ coat of arms on it stampedp. 235 in brass, which for the other engineer apprentices was an honor and an adornment, was for him nothing but trumpery; his horns stuck up through the crown.

It was gloomy and cold in here. The spiders’ webs under the roof had been allowed to hang there for years undisturbed, the dust on the cupboards and walls was turning yellow with age, the hearth was never whitened now—ever since Gunhild found the old German earthenware beaker broken on the flagstone, she hadn’t bothered to make it look nice. The floor received a wash every Saturday evening around the hearth as elsewhere; but the hand that washed was sluggish.

The bed stood there broad and unmade, with sedge grass sticking out at the ends. In it a little girl was sleeping. The grandfather clock with its two heavy iron weights had stopped.

“Well, have you seen anything of your parson this evening, Gunhild?” David asked. And when he got no answer, he continued: “He passed by twice yesterday evening.” And when David still didn’t get an answer, his tone became coarser: “You’d best take a trip up into the church tower to see if he’s sitting there. He can freeze to death waiting for you.”

And then David Finne went on sitting there for a long time waiting for the effect of what he had said; but Gunhild was silent. She sat as before with her face turned towards the window, and with one hand on the frame.

“Why won’t you have your kid baptized, Gunhild?”

Now she answered, but without turning her head. She half shouted:

“Ellen is baptized!”

“Yes, baptized by yon Ol‐Kanelesa. And called after that fine female he used to go with. What about the pastor then, isn’t he going to baptize Ellen?”

“Is there so much hurry, then?”

“Hurry! Ha! Ha! Ha! No doubt you’re both nervous, both you and the pastor. I’m sorry for you.”

“What concern of the pastor’s is Ellen?”

Gunhild half got up. She dug her fingers into the palms of her hands, hunched her shoulders and shrieked out:

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“David! Your smile is horrible. I can swear Ellen’s your child. D’you want me to?”

“That’s not necessary. I don’t want you to perjure yourself.”

She sank down in despair in her chair again, her whole body contracted. It was hopeless. The same thing over and over again, evening after evening. His bitter words, his derision and mad laughter—oh, it was as if a saw with long sharp teeth was cutting small pieces off her body. When he was sober, he was the worst of all. If he was drunk, he driveled, cried, and promised to better his ways. Then she too promised to better her ways. She promised to sweep away the cobwebs and the dust, whiten the hearth, and make the bed. . . . But when the morning came with a hangover, all the poison and bitterness came out of him again. And that paralyzed her hand and put paid to all her resolves. And so the grey spiders’ webs under the beams remained hanging there in peace, and the dust lay there undisturbed. Then all her longing and all her thoughts fled out through these doors and in through others. It was into Sigismund they then fled. She hadn’t met him for nearly two years. He hadn’t forgotten her, had he?

The child awoke and began to whimper. She let it lie there. This evening she hadn’t any heart even for her wee child.

“Pick the kid up,” David ordered.

She got up, picked it up, and began to feed it; but it continued to cry and Gunhild tried to sing to it—but it was no bright and happy cradle song.

“My, my, you’re singing!” David wouldn’t give her any peace this evening. He had no peace himself any longer.

“I’ve sung for you too.”

“You’ve sung for me?”

“In the spring when you lay ill, I sang for you then. I sang a hymn.”

“Yes, you sang for me, but your thoughts were elsewhere. It was an unpleasant song, Gunhild. . . . You sang like the Devil himself, you did.”

Then her temper got the better of her. She jumped up with the child at her breast. And her voice nearly failed her.

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“Is that the thanks I get for sitting up with you night after night.”

“Sat up with me? You sat there waiting for me to die.”

“Now you’ve said enough, David!”

“Yes, now I’ll soon have said enough.”

David took the candle out of the candlestick—then he sat there for a while with it in his hand, staring at the wick which smoked and glowed, his eyes fixed and protruding. And he began again as if he was talking to himself. “Yes, now I’ve said enough.” And after a bit: “Yes, I should have been silent a long time ago, I should.”

And then he got up and put the candle in an old rusty iron lantern.

“Goodnight, Gunhild. We’re through with each other now.” He held out his hand.

She didn’t take it. She had heard these words before, too—many times. The first time she heard them she was afraid. In her terror she had lied, and had sworn that she had completely forgotten Benjamin Sigismund.

Now there was no longer any terror in what David said. No icy cold blast. No threat. If he went, he would come back again all right, also this time. There was no end to it. She had been put into a grinding mill which ground and ground with hard stones. And the stones—they were her hate for David and her love for Benjamin Sigismund. There was no joy in her love for Benjamin anymore. No, it was torture! A cry of woe and lamentation! If she happened to see him pass outside in the street, she felt as if she stood naked to the waist in hot embers. Perhaps she could bind her eyes and keep them bound for days and years so as not to see him again. Lies! Lies! Lies, all lies! Oh, she would have to resign herself to standing patiently hour after hour, shivering, her teeth chattering in the cold wind, peering, just to see him cross the street to the tax inspector’s office. Every time she heard someone come running in jackboots up the stone steps, she turned hot and cold. If she had been out on the peat bogs or on the grazing grounds, she began to peer down the road as soon as she approached thep. 238 cottage—were there footprints in the gravel? Last spring when the birch trees began to leaf and the bird cherry to flower, she filled her window with cuttings. If he came past, perhaps he would understand that it was for him she had done it. One evening, when she knew he would come riding from Brækken, she had also strewn some juniper twigs on the street outside the doorstep. The whole of that night she had sat up and watched, so that she could see him high up on horseback as he rode past. And when, towards morning, tired and sleepless, she heard the sound of hooves up the street, she jumped up and locked the door. Later she heard that it was Michael Brinchmann who had come from the Fæmund smeltery. Benjamin Sigismund didn’t come until late the next day.

David held out his hand to her once more. He repeated: “Goodnight, Gunhild. You must take my hand now. Even though it’s hot as fire. You must—it’s the last time.”

“Keep quiet with that talk, David.”

“Goodnight then, Ellen.” He wanted to take the child in to his breast, but she wouldn’t let him have her, either. Then he gripped her arm so tightly that he made it feel numb. It was the grip of a man, and it made her start. And she let go the child and let him have her. He held her up to his face and whispered over and over again, “Good night, good night, little angel. It’s not your fault that you have come into this wicked world.” And with great emotion, he mumbled, “May God protect and keep you all the days of your life.” Then he put the child carefully back in its mother’s arms. At the same time he inclined his head towards her. As usual she moved away—now too, in disgust. And then he remained standing in the middle of the room as if pondering something. His eye fell on the clock, and he went over to it and drew up the weights, set the pendulum going and moved the hands to nine.

“You must watch the clock,” he said. “It will stop when it’s done.”

“Done, what do you mean by that, David?”

He didn’t answer. He only buttoned up his overalls and went out of the door, without looking back.

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Gunhild sat there and heard him rummaging around with something out by the outer door. Now it struck her that there was something unusual in the way David had left. He had never before, when he went out, taken hold of Ellen and had been kind to her. And fear gripped her—fear that something would happen tonight.

“David!” she called out. “What are you going to do?”

And with the child in her arms she ran after him, shouting out once again, “David!” Then she turned and went in again. She dared not create a disturbance. Now fear gripped her more and more. It gnawed with greedy teeth at her breast. It tore and tugged and bit its way further and further in. . . . She had never felt such a terrible fear. Would David really do what he so often had said he would: make away with himself? She wrapped little Ellen in a sheepskin blanket, put an apron on, threw a scarf over her head, and rushed out again.

In the streets everything was dark. Only a gleam of yellow light flickered on a window pane here and there from dying embers on the hearths.

She ran down the main street and stared hastily at everybody she met and passed. She stopped and stared for a moment up at the windows where Benjamin Sigismund lived. There were still lights in all the windows. What was it she heard? Benjamin Sigismund was singing. He was singing a hymn. She crept in to the wall and listened:

Alack, ’tis cold in the world, All its light is but a shadow . . .

“Benjamin! Benjamin!”

What concern was he to her now? At this moment all her thoughts were for David. It was he she was out looking for. Why was she looking for him? Did she know herself?

She crept along the wall of the house and made her way through a side street.

She didn’t find David. And so she had to go back. She went to bed fully clothed beside little Ellen. She folded her hands and tried to pray for David. . . . It was like praying for ap. 240 stranger. And what should she pray for? That he might come home again so that they could continue their life of discord? And heap sin upon sin? Could she pray for that? No! She lay there, apathetic and helpless, staring at the grey glimmer of light on the panes.

In the quietness, and with the licking of the clock, calm finally descended on her. And far away she heard a voice singing:

Alack, ’tis cold in the world, All its light is but a shadow . . .

Hounded, persecuted, driven to madness and terror, terror of life, David Finne ran up across the churchyard, a leather halter in his hand. Now darkness enveloped him. It rolled forth from under the sky and swept in waves up from the earth.

The cherub revolved with a hoarse shriek up on the tower; its golden trumpet glinted like lightning in the light from the stars. A mountain owl dived down from a window on the east side and landed with a screech on the lopsided cross of a grave. There it began to hoot. To David’s ears its hollow, eery voice sounded like the words, “Beware of an unhallowed death, David! The grave is deep and dark, remember that, David!”

He groped down between the graves for a stone to throw at the owl.

Then the owl began to laugh: “You’re a fool, David. Everybody laughs at you. Gunhild laughs when you cry, Sigismund laughs when you’re tortured, Ol‐Kanelesa laughs too!”

He found a stone and threw it into the darkness.

“Quiet, you mountain wolf!”

Was it flying right over his head? He felt the cold air from the tips of its wings. A bad omen. Its shriek meant death, he knew that. But he couldn’t turn back. He had no power over himself any more—it was as if he had to do what he had notp. 241 willed. It was as if someone was running after him, whipping him—Don’t stop now! Keep going! Keep going! Now everything was one thick blackness. He could just glimpse the white church wall.

Everything creaked and groaned around him. Dead leaves rustled over by the graves of the bigwigs. Earth and dust whirled up. The entrance to a nearby house blew to and fro. To and fro. Just as if someone was going in and out, in and out. The noise as of a whole platoon, riding, driving, and marching.

He felt up and down the church door with his hand, found the key and turned it. That shrieked, too. Tonight everything had got tongue and voice, both the dead and the living. But was there a key in the inner door of the church? Beret‐Lusia Bentz, who cleaned the church every Saturday, was in the habit of leaving it there. Yes, it was there. He turned that, too. Out of habit he took off his cap and put it under his arm. A gleam of light from the iron lantern fell on the pews and the rows of chairs.

What was it he saw? All the seats were full of people.

He retreated backwards to the door again and stood there, staring into the vast, dark church.

No, the seats were empty

He mustered up fresh courage. And he went quickly up through the nave. His big, heavy hunting boots clattered on the hard floor. Was he really afraid of dying? He who for many years had wished for death—death which would be his friend and embrace him and kiss him.

Death’s kiss was cold. No, the kiss of death was peaceful. He longed for that peace now. And then for a good grave.

Now he would make his rope fast up on the pulpit. Sigismund could have the pleasure of finding him here. Tomorrow, when he came from the vestry—when he came on his way up to the altar, then a sight would meet him and Ol‐Kanelesa, the last thing they had imagined. Benjamin Sigismund would, at last, stand face to face with his crime. Then his days as pastor and dean would be numbered. Disgrace and shame would bep. 242 branded on that pious man’s brow. Judas! The soldiers in the Works’ militia, the miners, and every man of honor wouldn’t hesitate a moment to chase him out of the church with their slicks.

And Gunhild, the whore! She, too, would at last eat her bread with salt tears on it.

He softened a little at the thought of her and the child, little Ellen. In truth he didn’t wish Gunhild any harm. She, too, had been a victim. If that trash of a parson hadn’t been after her continually, things wouldn’t have turned out so badly with her as they had done. And little Ellen. At the thought of her David Finne burst into tears.

He lifted up his hands with the halter and called out:

“I’ll bring so much shame on you, Sigismund, that you’ll become the stone everybody spits on.”

Sobbing, he put down the lantern on the altar ring. Now he was again standing on the same spot he had stood on when Gunhild was with him. He would kneel here once again. Once again he would bend his knee in front of the altar and try to imagine that Gunhild was beside him.

He closed his eyes. He saw himself in uniform. He saw Gunhild with her bouquet in her hand—but then that horrible figure of a pastor came forward with his prayer book in his hand.

David jumped up and brandished his clenched fist over the altar rail.

“Go!” he shrieked. “Go! Go! Seducer! Go to hell!”

Not even now, when he was on the brink of the grave, was he to be spared seeing that beastly parsonical face.

What was that? He jumped up. He turned around and stared about him.

From the galleries, from the pews there was also a shriek: “Go! Go!” Was it he who was being called? Who was it who was calling?

Up in the tower the little bell began to ring. Who was ringing so late at night? Perhaps he was listening to his own funeral bell. No, bells weren’t rung for suicides.

“Ding, dong, ding! Ding, dong, ding!”

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No, it was not the little bell; it was up in heaven they were ringing now—

He got up, ready to jump over the altar rail. Now he had only to tie a knot in the leather halter. And then—the light flared up. Who was standing there? Lorenz Lossius! And there stood Hans Aasen. And there came Jocum Jürgens and his wife Elisabeth walking round the altar. They who had died over 200 years ago, they stood here as in life and stared at him. More came, people in strange attire, people he had never seen. There stood a clergyman in all his vestments; was it Jens Tausan?

He took a couple of steps backwards down the church; they came striding up after him with noiseless steps, serious and silent. And then the rusty iron lantern clattered down on the floor. And the darkness closed around him. He continued to walk backwards down through the church.