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Updated: May 2, 2025
"The sky is clear and calm and blue, and the night is fair as the day. Never before have I known the time when I could drive about the ice week after week. It is not often the sea freezes out here, and if once and again the ice has formed, there has always come a storm to break it up a few days after." The skipper still looked black and glum; he made no answer to all Torarin's chat.
He walked with her all the way to Torarin's cabin, and she noticed that whenever the storm blew fiercely in their faces, he placed himself before her and screened her. Elsalill thought, all the time they were walking: "My dead foster sister knew nothing of this, that he would atone for his crime and become a good man." Sir Archie still whispered the tenderest words in Elsalill's ear.
Torarin's cabin stood high up on the ridge of the island, so that it had the town on one side and the wilderness on the other. And when Elsalill opened her door she came out upon broad, naked slabs of rock, from which she had a wide view to the westward, even to the dark horizon of the open sea.
When Elsalill heard this she turned very pale and said: "Then it must have been an angel from heaven who brought you the message and led you home." Another time Sir Archie sat in Torarin's cabin and talked with Elsalill. There was no one beside them; they talked gaily together and were very cheerful. Sir Archie was telling Elsalill that she must go home with him to Scotland.
Beside him stood old Olof the groom, who had served at the parsonage as long as Torarin could remember. "Have you such haste to leave our house tonight, Torarin?" said the man. "Let be and come indoors! Herr Arne sits there waiting for you." A thousand thoughts came into Torarin's head. He knew not whether he was dreaming or awake.
And then she followed the dead girl through many streets, all the way from Torarin's cabin, which stood on a rocky slope, down to the level streets about the harbour and the market place. The dead girl always walked two paces in front of Elsalill.
But Torarin's mother said to Elsalill: "It was well that you sent for me, for it is not fitting for a maid to sit alone in the house with such a man as Sir Archie. You know full well that a soldier of fortune has neither honour nor conscience." "Did I send for you?" asked Elsalill, astonished. "Yes," answered the old woman.
As they spoke thus Elsalill was already leaning over her work. All was still for a while, but then she felt a light breath on her forehead, as when the dead girl had come to her in Torarin's cabin. She looked up and saw that she was alone.
But more often than not Torarin's eyes rested upon a great oaken chest which stood at the foot of the four-post bed. And he looked at it so long because he knew that in it Herr Arne kept all his silver moneys, and he had heard they were so many that they filled the chest to the very lid.
She bewailed Herr Arne and his household, and lamented that she had lost all who were dear to her. Most of all she wept for her foster sister, and said she wished she had not hidden herself against the wall, so that she might have shared death with her. Torarin's mother said nothing to this so long as her son was at home.
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