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Eleseus looked down the field: his father was furiously at work driving a tethering-peg into the ground; he seemed to find it a difficult matter, for all that the ground was soft enough. The brothers set off down the road; they came to Maaneland, and there stood Barbro in the doorway and called to them to come up. "You going away again, Eleseus?
"But the girl," she whispered, "what about Barbro herself?" "The girl Barbro," said the Lensmand, "she's under arrest now in Bergen. The law must take its course," said he. And he took the little body and went back again to the village.... Little wonder, then, that Axel Ström was anxious.
Went over last year she did, but doesn't care to stay." "Never mind about her," says Barbro. "And what'd become of me then?" says she, and begins to be soft and mournful. "No. That's why I've not fixed up all certain with her."
What ... ay, I'm lying here and seeing things.... Is it with child you are now, Barbro?" "What's that you say?" cries Barbro furiously; and goes on again: "Oh, 'twould serve you right if I took and heaved you out on the muck-heap for your wicked tongue." And at that the invalid was silent for one thoughtful moment, her mouth trembling as if trying so hard to smile, but dare not.
Isak had seen it; a strange young lady with her hair curled up and a long watch-chain hanging down over her breast. Her parents were proud of little Barbro, and showed the photograph about to all who came; 'twas grand to see how she had learned town ways and got on in the world. As for the red band and the guitar, she had given them up, it seemed.
"Here's thanks!" says Sivert, and gets up from his seat to go. "Here's thanks!" says Eleseus also; but he did not rise nor bow as a man should do in saying thanks for a cup of coffee; not he, indeed he would see her at the devil for a bitter-tongued lump of ugliness. "Let me look," said Barbro.
"I might be needing help, true enough, for the summer," said Axel. "But what's it mean, anyway, you wanting to come back?" "Nay, never mind me," says Barbro, putting it off. "I'll go on again tomorrow. Go to Sellanraa and cross the hills. I've a place there." "You've fixed up with some one there?" "Ay." "I might be needing summer help myself," says Axel again.
Fru Heyerdahl came and lectured her, lent her books and a fool for her pains. Barbro had lived in Bergen and read the papers and been to the theatre! She was no innocent lamb from the countryside ... But Fru Heyerdahl must have grown suspicious at last. One day she comes up at three in the morning to the maids' room and calls: "Barbro!" "Yes," answers Cook. "It's Barbro I want. Isn't she there?
Barbro begins looking about for it, and once more acts with presence of mind: she makes as if she had caught the creature, and drops it realistically into the fire. "Where did you get it?" asks her mistress angrily. "Where I got it?" "Yes, that's what I want to know." But here Barbro makes a bad mistake. "At the store," she ought to have said, of course that would have been quite enough.
"'Twas found out all the same with Inger at Sellanraa," said Axel. Barbro thought for a moment. "Well, I don't care," said she. "The law's all different now, and if you read the papers you'd know. There's heaps that have done it, and don't get anything to speak of." Barbro sets out to explain it, to teach him, as it were getting him to take a broad view of things.
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