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If you are her friend," she added, addressing Ulrika, "why do you not make her rest at home and keep warm? She is so old and feeble!" "Feeble!" shrieked Lovisa; "feeble!" And she seemed choking with passion. "If I had my fingers at your throat, you should then see if I am feeble! I " Ulrika pulled her by the arm, and whispered something which had the effect of calming her a little.
"Ask him, then," said Lovisa imperatively. "Tell him the village is in fear of her. Tell him that if he will do nothing we will. And if all fails, come to me again; and remember! . . . I shall not only act, I shall speak!" And emphasizing the last word as a sort of threat, she turned and strode out of the hut.
Thelma, touched by her utter misery, would have offered consolation, but Lovisa repelled her with a fierce gesture. "Go!" said the old woman harshly. "You have cast your spells upon her I am witness of your work! And shall you escape just punishment? No; not while there is a God in heaven, and I, Lovisa Elsland, live to perform His bidding!
I knew her well even as the broken heart knows its destroyer!" Gueldmar looked perplexedly at Ulrika. "Surely she raves again?" he said. Ulrika was silent. "Rave? Tell him I do not rave!" cried Lovisa rising in her bed to utter her words with more strength and emphasis. "May be I have raved, but that is past! The Lord, who will judge and condemn my soul, bear witness that I speak the truth!
Olaf Gueldmar, rememberest thou the days when we were young?" "'Tis long ago, Lovisa!" replied the bonde with brief gentleness. "Long ago? It seems but yesterday! But yesterday I saw the world all radiant with hope and joy and love love that to you was a mere pastime but with me " She shuddered and seemed to lose herself in a maze of dreary recollections.
Throwing himself on Ulrika with sudden ferocity, he pushed and beat her back as though he were a wolf-hound struggling with refractory prey; and though the ancient Lovisa rushed to the rescue, and Thelma imploringly called upon her zealous champion to desist, all remonstrances were unavailing, till Sigurd had reduced his enemy to the most abject and whimpering terror.
She called out 'Hey, Britta! Do you know they have got your mistress down at Talvig, and they'll burn her for a witch before they sleep! 'She has gone to Bosekop, I answered, 'so I know you tell a lie. 'It is no lie, said the old woman, 'old Lovisa has her this time for sure. And she laughed and went away.
"Sigurd is my son!" said Ulrika, with a sort of solemn resignation, then, with a sudden gesture, she threw her hands above her head, crying, "My son, my son! The child I thought I had killed! The Lord be praised I did not murder him!" Lovisa Elsland seemed stupefied with surprise. "Is this the truth?" she asked at last, slowly and incredulously. "The truth, the truth!" cried Ulrika passionately.
An ambitious young Lutheran preacher came, and, addressing himself to all assembled, loudly extolled the superhuman virtues of the dead "Mother of the village," as Lovisa had been called, amid the hysterical weeping and moaning of the mourners, he begged them to look upon her "venerated face" and observe "the smile of God's own peace engraven there," and amid all his eloquence, and the shrieking excitement of his fanatical hearers, Ulrika alone was silent.
"It is well, indeed, if I can be of service, Lovisa Elsland," responded Gueldmar, "though I am but a sorry consoler, holding as I do, that death is the chief blessing, and in no way to be regretted at any time. Moreover, when the body grows too weak to support the soul, 'tis as well to escape from it with what speed we may." "Escape escape? Where?" asked Lovisa. "From the worm that dieth not?
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