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Updated: June 2, 2025
Outside were some badly worn wooden steps; Elof's foot caught in a hole, and down he went. Halvor fell upon him, seized the watch, then gave him several hard kicks. "You'd better quit kicking me, and find out what's wrong with my back," said Elof. Halvor stopped at once, but Elof made no move to raise himself. "Help me up," he said. "You can help yourself when you've slept off your jag."
"Then your troubles were mostly imaginary." Karin mused as she looked at Halvor: "He must be thinking what a fool I was not to have married him, who is such a handsome and dignified man. Now he's got me where he can crow over me, and he has come only to laugh at me." "I've been inside talking with Elof," Halvor enlightened. "It was really him I wanted to see."
A bright red spot appeared on both cheeks, and she looked as miserable as in the days when she had had her struggles with Elof. She had come out to find Mother Stina and ask her to go inside. "I didn't know till just now that you were here, Mother Storm," she said. Mother Stina at first declined, but was finally persuaded.
In the middle of his monologue Berger Sven Persson glanced over at Halvor, who sat at the table, looking glum and sulky, his coffee cup untouched. "It's pretty rough on him," thought Berger Sven Persson, "particularly if there's any truth in what people say about his having given Elof a little lift on his way into the next world.
"You'd better lay in a good meal while you're about it," she said, "for if you have made my brother drink himself to death, you'll soon have to put up with poorer fare than you're getting on the Ingmar Farm." "How you talk! As if a little brandy could hurt him!" "Mark what I say! If the boy dies, you'll get twenty years in prison, Elof."
Holding the money in front of his eyes, she said: "Look, Ingmar! here's every krona of your inheritance money. It was Elof, of course, who hid it in the pillow!" Ingmar heard what she said, and he saw the bank notes but he saw and heard as in a daze. Gertrude placed the money in his hand, but his fingers would not close over it, and it fell to the ground.
He had to live at the Ingmar Farm and be under the domination of his father-in-law; and also at the Ingmar Farm hard work and frugality were the rule of the day. As long as Ingmar Ingmarsson lived Elof seemed quite content with his lot, toiling and slaving with never so much as a complaint.
When Halvor was showing the watch he would never let it out of his hands, but would always keep a tight grip on the chain. One day Halvor stood talking to a group of peasants, telling them the usual story, and at the climax the watch was of course brought out. In the meantime Elof had come into the shop, but as every one's attention was riveted upon the watch, no one had remarked his presence.
And he left the farm so heavily mortgaged, that Karin would have been forced to turn it over to the creditors, had not Halvor been rich enough to buy in the property and pay off the debts. Ingmar Ingmarsson's twenty thousand kroner, of which Elof had been sole trustee, had entirely disappeared.
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