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Updated: June 12, 2025
After all, Uncle Frederick was his confidant in many matters; he would look him up. As he knew that Uncle Frederick was at Aunt Maren's, he betook himself towards the Palace in order to meet him on his way back from Homan's Town. He chose one of the narrow avenues on the right, which he knew to be his uncle's favorite route; and a little way up the hill he seated himself on a bench to wait.
Maren's tears moved him strangely deep down under everything else; he had to put his arms round her neck and join in her tears. The two old people sat on the down holding each other until their tears were spent. Already considerable evil had fallen in the path of this new being; now fell the first tears.
As the lad carried the peat into Maren's woodshed, and the farmer's wife unpacked eggs, ham, cakes, butter and many other good things on the table in the little sitting room, they came streaming past, staring through the window visiting the people in the other part of the house with one or other foolish excuse. Maren knew quite well why they came, but it did not worry her any longer.
But as soon as she rose, he opened his eyes, gazing at Maren's loosened hair and tear-stained face. "Don't cry, Maren," said he, "you and Ditte'll get on all right. But do this for me, put up your hair as you did at our wedding, will you, Maren?" "But I can't do it myself, Sören," answered the old woman, overwhelmed and beginning to cry again. But Sören held to his point.
On through the leafy forest, parting the lacing vines, holding each branch that it might not swish to place, they went, far from safety and the commonplace of life, and a prescience of disaster weighed on the trapper's soul like lead. At last it grew more than he could bear, and he reached a hand to Maren's shoulder, a tentative hand, hesitating, as if it felt its touch blasphemy.
There was silence while the flames crackled and the chimney roared, and presently the factor said heavily: "I cannot! Read..." So Ridgar, bending in the light, read aloud Maren's letter. At its end the man on the bed turned his face to the wall and spoke no more. From that time forth the tide of returning life in him stopped sluggishly, as if the locks were set in some ocean-tapping channel.
De Courtenay stumbled, and in the scramble to right themselves they lost more time than they could spare. Before they were up and started, a shrill voice came into the gorge, yelling its "Hi! Hi! Hi-a!" De Courtenay suddenly stopped. "'Tis useless!" he said breathlessly; "We'll never make it! Here, do you take my place, Ma'amselle!" He caught Maren's shoulder and pushed her forward.
One of the women, a little creature with dark hair and blue eyes, Irish eyes "rubbed in with a smutty finger," came forward and looked up into Maren's stained face, streaked with her tears, her eyes dazed and all but closing with the weariness that had only laid its hand upon her in the last few moments, but whose sudden touch was heavy as lead. "Say ye so!" she said wonderingly; "a girl!
Their affairs could be settled by every one, and at the time of Sören's death there was much multiplying and subtracting in the homes round about on Maren's behalf. But to one question there was no answer; what had become of the two hundred crowns paid for Ditte for once and for all? Ay, where had they gone?
On receiving information of old Maren's death, four of her children assembled at the hut on the Naze, to look after their own interests, and watch that no-one ran off with anything. The other four on the other side of the globe, could of course not be there.
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