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Was there a man with a good farm and a well-stocked place of his own waiting for her somewhere else? Axel could at times go so far as to strike his fist on the table in his impatience with women and their foolish humours. A strange thing, Barbro seemed to have nothing really in her head but the thought of Bergen and town life. Well and good. But if so, why had she come back at all, confound her!
Axel, taking it that way, sent a flow of hysterical joy through Barbro, and she burst out: "I'll work for two! Oh, you wait and see, Axel; I'll do all you set me to, and more beyond. Wear myself to the bone, I will, and be thankful, if only you'll put up with me so!" More tears and smiles and tenderness after that.
"You can go and see your parents now and then during the day," says her mistress. But Fru Heyerdahl was wide awake enough, and her suspicion was not gone; she waited a week, and tried at four in the morning. "Barbro!" she called. Oh, but this time 'twas Cook's turn out, and Barbro was at home; the maids' room was a nest of innocence. Her mistress had to hit on something in a hurry.
A summer and two winters now he had been forced to make do with Oline, and no saying how much longer it might be yet. And Barbro, the creature, did she care? He had had a few words with her down in the village one day that winter, but never a tear had trickled slowly from her eyes to freeze on her cheek. "What you've done with rings I gave you?" asks he. "Rings?" "Ay, the rings."
As for that Barbro case, Oline was displeased, ay, disappointed was Oline. Both of them acquitted! That Brede's girl Barbro should be let off when Inger Sellanraa had got eight years was not to Oline's taste at all; she felt an unchristian annoyance at such favouritism. But the Almighty would look to things, no doubt, in His own good time!
It looked as if he were trying to make himself indispensable to the telegraph people in the little time that remained, so as to keep his job. He never came in to see Axel now that Barbro was gone, but went straight by a piece of high-and-mightiness ill fitted to his state, seeing that he was still living on at Breidablik and had not moved.
No, it was true he had dug a new grave and buried the body away there, but that was long after, and by reason he had thought the first place was not dry enough, though indeed it was, and 'twas only Axel's odd way of thinking. What need, then, for Axel to fear at all when Barbro took all the blame on herself that way? And as for Barbro herself, there were mighty influences at work.
"Oh, of course," Eleseus agreed. "He may be an excellent fellow in his way, but that's not everything...." But the thought of Axel seemed to have made Barbro anxious; she got up, and said to Eleseus: "You'll have to go now; I must see to the animals." Next Sunday Eleseus went down a good deal later than usual, and carried the letter himself. It was a letter!
There was a girl in Bergen at the hotel who had killed two children; she was from Christiania, and wore a hat a hat with feathers in. They had given her three months for the second one, but the first was never discovered, said Barbro. Axel listened to all this and grew more than ever afraid of her.
She knew so much of the world, and could take lightly many little trifles that were terrible and serious things for folk in the wilds. It was well in a way; she was clever enough for both of them, careless enough for both. And she did not go about like a terrible creature herself. Barbro a monster? Not in the least.
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