IX

What seemed most remarkable of all to Sivert was that there was never anything strange about Olsen’s manner in the daytime, even when the smith was not there.

Olsen by day was simply brutal, like any ordinary man; his eyes, that glittered so insanely in the dark, looked out in daylight with a gleam of unadulterated cruelty from under the brow they shared in common. And the hand that stroked him so affectionately could land out a blow that would make his ears tingle all day.

For a time Sivert endeavoured to persuade himself that it was merely nightmare. But there were things that could not be so explained. And he bore his horror alone, for his mother misunderstood the hints he threw out, owing to the fact that Sivert, as was his custom, assured her that Olsendid notdo so-and-so.

“I should think not, indeed. It’s wicked even to think such things.”

“But I can’t help it.”

“Then say your prayers properly and earnestly, and God will help you all right.”

“I say my prayers like anything, every night. But Olsen’s ever so strong, and it’s no good. God can’t manage him, I suppose.”

“Sivert!”

“Or perhaps God doesn’t trouble about things as much as people say.”

“Sivert, now be a good child, do. Do you think God doesn’t trouble about us? Why, look, what a lovely boy He’s given us now....” Fru Egholm lifted the coverlet aside, to show the baby’s face. “Isn’t he sweet? And so healthy he looks. I think he’ll be fair haired.”

“But you promised me I was to be the only fair-haired boy?”

“I’d like to have as many of them as I can. They’re the best sort. And, you know, Abel was fair haired, but Cain was dark.”

“Just like Father!”

“Oh, child, how can you say such a thing!” Fru Egholm chattered on to cover her confusion. What a head the child had, to be sure.

The little one in the cradle awoke, and set up a faint cry like the bleating of a lamb. His mother took him up to her breast.

Sivert looked on with an expression of intense disgust.

“That’s enough—that’s enough,” he said again and again, his eyes straining awry in consuming envy.

“Mother, let’s break it up, let’s tear it to bits, before it gets any bigger.”

“What do you think your father would say to that?” said his mother, with a smile.

Sivert started; he had not thought of that difficult side of the question.

“Couldn’t we say it had got lost somehow? No, I know; we’ll tell him there never was but me and Hedvig. He won’t remember. And then we can show him me, and ask if that’s the one he means. Oh, may we, dear little darling mother?” And he stretched out his hand for the child.

“Just listen and I’ll tell you what Father says,” said his mother, feeling in a pocket of her dress.

Sivert’s face darkened; he stared anxiously at the letter.

“My dear Anna,—Excuse my long silence, but I have got things settled now, and every day feeling happier for the change. Karlsen, the Evangelist, has been a nightmare to me, but now I am awake once more, and drink in the fresh air and feel myself another man. And only fancy—my powers of invention, that I thought were dead, have come back again stronger than before. You remember I used to say I was asthe hand of Godhere on earth. I am to go over the work, file away at it and make it even—in a word,improve the whole world, that He created great and rich and round, it is true, but rough at the edges. In my innermost self, and right out to my fingertips, I feel conscious of this as my calling. IfI only go for a little walk with the wind against me, I feel my powers in urgent movement. Now, the friction exerted by the wind could be reduced to one-seventh by means of a little invention of mine. I can tell you, there is agreat timeahead. But it is not this that occupies my mind just now, but something else. A machine. I dare not set down on paper what it is. Only this: be sure that all the taps and other parts of thesteam wagon, my old construction, are sent to me here as soon as possible. I must try my wings now; I feel myself free. Free as a bird.”

“So I should think,” murmured Fru Egholm. “With no wife and children or anything else to look after. Well, thank goodness that’s not all.”

“I believe God Himself has led me to this place, and guided my footsteps in the way.”

“Yes, I daresay—but who was it went down on her knees a hundred times and prayed God to deliver you out of that Angel creature’s claws?”

Fru Egholm knew the letter by heart from end to end. Nevertheless, each line affected her now as strongly as if read for the first time. Even then, despite her critical opposition to the present passage, she was already feeling for her handkerchief, ready for the touching part she knew was just ahead.

“I have fitted up a splendid little studio in a carpenter’s place. Do you think anyone in Odensewould ever have given me credit for the rent, and paid for a glass roof into the bargain and all that? When I came into the town the first day, it was like a triumphal march. I walked down from the station with a man, and asked him if he knew a place where I could put up. ‘Yes,’ said he; ‘you can stay at Vang’s hotel. My name’s Henrik Vang; it’s my father owns the place.’ I shook my head, thinking of my 3kroner50 that was all I had. But he said I could fix my own price; he’d look after that all right. Did you ever hear of such luck? We spent the whole evening together, in the restaurant, and all the notables of the town were there. He told them to put it all on his bill. While I think of it—be sure to send my embroidered waistcoat and the small boots, if you can manage it. They’re only in for a small sum, and you should be able to get them out all right, now you haven’t got me to feed....”

“Only a small sum! Heh! Embroidered waistcoat and creaky boots—no, my good man, you won’t get them, and that’s flat.”

But now came the part that filled Fru Egholm with joy and pride. Egholm wrote that he had been thinking much about the vision she had had on the night the child was born. It would be as well to give the child a name that should remind the Lord of His promise. He would suggestEmanuel.

Was there ever such a thoughtful creature in the world? And it was the first time Egholm had ever troubled himself to think of a name for any ofthe children. But perhaps he was a different man now. For he wrote further:

“The country round here is lovely. Only two minutes’ walk from my studio down to the shore. Might easily have a little sailing boat there, all ready to hand. I often go down there, but only for a minute at a time—there might be people coming up while I was out. You must see and come over soon. I am longing for you, dearest Anna....”

“And I’m longing, too,” said Fru Egholm, using her handkerchief. “Man and wife should be one, as they say. But what about you young ones? Hedvig ought surely to be able to get a place in Knarreby, no worse than the one she’s got. It’s you that’s the trouble, Sivert lad.”

“Olsen’s a good enough hand at thrashing, but I think Father beats him at using hard words,” said Sivert judicially.

The matter was not one to be settled out of hand. Money was not the only difficulty. Fru Egholm had gradually worked up quite a decent business connection with the sewing of grave-clothes. One day she had made 1kroner67øre,net earnings. And a business like that was not to be lightly thrown away.

Hedvig was getting on nicely, at school and in her situation, and Sivert’s curious revelations grew less frequent.

Indeed, the boy suffered less now from the attentions of his tormentor at the smithy than at first. There were always the wonderful stories to begin with, and these he took as a kind of compensation for what followed. Olsen had also a book which he would bring out on rare occasions. It was a crumpled rag to look at, from the outside. But within were marvels. Sivert’s eyes glowed when Olsen took it out of the drawer. It was his journeyman’s book, at once a passport and a register.

Page after page, the stamp and signatures of the police—the State Authorities, no less. One stamp for every imaginable town.

Sivert was dumb with emotion. Even Olsen’s voice shook. And in the middle of showing it, he would sometimes snatch up the book with an oath and hide it jealously against his naked breast, only to draw it forth lovingly a moment later. It was as if he could not bear the glorious vision for more than a little glimpse at a time.

It was a treasure of almost inconceivable value, was that book. Better to lose one’s own head than that, for, once lost, the unfortunate owner would be put in prison on the spot. On the other hand, whoever held such a book, duly stamped and signed and in order, might wander the whole world over, and none should dare to touch a hair of his head.

In the front of the book was something more wonderful even than the police stamps. Sivert had been three times granted a sight of it. Nothing less than a painting in words of the owner of the book. The boy grew giddy at the thought that in five years’ time he, too, might attain a like distinction.

“Height—58 inches.Hair—black.Eyes—brown (eyebrows meeting in centre).Nose—ordinary.”

Sivert turned his eyes from the book to the living Olsen before him; it was a marvel that anyone could have hit off the description thus to a hair.

But then came the best of all:

“Any distinctive marks:Has six toes on each foot.”

Olsen threw back his head, and set his lips sternly. Yes, he had six toes; it was perfectly true. And why shouldn’t he? What, didn’t believe it? Well, then, look here!

Off came Olsen’s socks, and Sivert, in humble amazement, counted the whole dozen. True, the outermost toe was no giant, but rather a tiny blind thing that clung to the next. There was no nail to it, yet it was undoubtedly a toe. A whole limb additional!

Sivert counted his own inferior equipment again and again by night, and in course of time developed a fine gift of counting them wrong.

“Why don’t they write down about your inside?” he ventured to ask.

“They can’t. That’s private,” answered Olsen.

Henrik Vang loved a soft, easy seat, and from his very first visit he had chosen to sit down in the middle of Egholm’s iron bed. Sometimes, when it was cold, he would pull the bedclothes up over his legs, right to his throat. Egholm did not mind. He preferred to walk up and down the floor, listening to his own voice. It was rarely but he had some new strange plan or invention in his head.

To-day, however, he was nervous, and void of ideas. Anna was coming by the midday train. Consequently, he found nothing now to talk of but old, worn-out themes. Of the Brethren, who had cheated him out of all that money. Of his great Day of Reckoning with those same Brethren, and how they had risen up and cast him forth, together with one Meilby, a photographer.

“He was something like you, Vang, by the way, was Meilby. Same light hair, and eyes—and especially in the look of them. Now, anyone not seeing that great big body of yours would say you weren’t grown up yet. But Meilby, he was younger, and not so heavy built, perhaps.”

“Was he married?”

“No, but he....”

“Then he wasn’t like me.”

“Ha ha—but he was, though, on my word. The voice, too. Same rumbling sort of way, as if that wasn’t properly set either.”

“Anyhow, he wasn’t married, so he wasn’t like me. She’s been talking to Father again. Asking him to turn me out. I don’t know if she wants me to die of hunger. For she never gives me anything herself.”

“Well, you know, Vang,” laughed Egholm, “you’re not exactly a model husband, either. Women like being made a fuss of now and then. Now me, for instance. Here’s my wife coming to-day, and what do I do? Go up to the station myself to meet her. See?”

Egholm looked at his watch, and felt uncomfortable. Again he had forgotten the time. The train must be in by now, and Anna would be left standing there, utterly strange to the place....

He left Vang in the nest he had made, and hurried out.

Annoyance at the little misfortune was but a herald for the host of black thoughts that had been gathering in Egholm’s mind ever since the day when, in a weak—a very weak—moment, he had written to Anna to come.

Now, was it nice, was it decent of her, to take advantage of a momentary lapse like that?

Anyhow, it was too late now. The thing was done. Good-bye to freedom—he had himself turned back to seek his fetters. Anna would be there, right enough, standing on the platform ready to clap the handcuffs on him once more.

And now, just as things were beginning to move! With a wife and two hungry children to drag about after him, it would be stagnation once more, however he might put his shoulder to the work.

The gravel path leading to the station had been newly planted with trees, poor, scraggy things, more like the brooms on the buoys outside the harbour. And now they had to feel about with their roots through the hard earth. It would be ages before they grew to be tall and strong, with broad leafy crowns. And they were young—but he was no longer young, and his strength had been wasted in many a barren soil.

Egholm clasped his hands under his cloak, and prayed:

“Lord, spare Thy servant. Take away this cup from me. Let it be so that, when I come to the station, I may wake up out of a painful dream. No wife and children at all. Lord, hear Thy servant; hear him for that he suffered for the sake of Thy word, at the hands of the Brethren in Odense!”

He writhed his bony fingers, and looked up to the blue March sky. How grateful he would be;how he would fall down and bend his forehead to the earth, if his prayer should be heard!

But, alas, they would surely be there—Anna, Sivert, and Hedvig. Yes; they would be there, never fear.

It suddenly occurred to him that he could not remember the children’s faces. All he could call to mind of Hedvig was her keen grey eyes, and Sivert was associated chiefly with the grating sound of a little saw. But that sound was so vividly present in his mind that he lashed out with his stick, by way of relief. It was a reflex movement, a case of cause and effect.

Egholm had expected to find his family on the steps of the station, but there was no one there. The whole place looked dead and deserted. The omnibus horse stood drowsing in its tether, while the driver, Red Jeppe, jested with the waitress at the bar. No one on the platform but a group of girls. And it was already half-past twelve by the clock.

Strange—very strange.

He drifted up to a porter, and asked:

“The train from Odense—has it come in yet?”

“She’s broken down at Aaby. A nasty mess.”

“Broken down!”

“Yes. Engine off the line, and....”

Oh!Egholm felt a nasty blow at his heart. So God—or was it Satan?—had heard his prayer for once. With an ashy face he asked again:

“Nobody hurt, I hope?” And the answer seemed to flash on him as a vision: Anna stretched out on a canvas bier, her thick hair matted with blood.

“Hurt? Oh, Lord, no,” said the porter. “Only the engine turned off down the wrong track, and stuck in the gravel.” He yawned hungrily. “You’re not the only one hanging about here waiting for their blessed trains....”

Egholm felt a strange weakness in the legs, and sat down. The signal bell rang—train due in ten minutes. It seemed to him as if the station had suddenly brightened up. Quite cheerful all at once. Those girls there, for instance, with lovely new boots on. And laughing all the time. The one on the outside leaned right over to listen when the others whispered. Well, well, a good thing everyone wasn’t miserable.

And there—there was a man coming out of the waiting-room—a tall, fat man with rather thin legs—a commercial traveller. He didn’t look pleased at all, but dragged at his two bags like a convict in irons. Then, at sight of the girls, he stopped and drew himself up, anxious to be seen.

He draws a mirror and a tiny brush from his pocket, and wields them like a virtuoso. Then a cigar-case, and next a smart little contrivance for cutting off the end; another little case, with matches in. Evidently he is trying to impress those girls withan idea that he is a sort of original chest of drawers, with all manner of cases and shiny, interesting things inside. And he succeeds. The girls stop talking, and look at him, to see what will happen next. But after a little they fall to laughing again.

When the train rolled in, Fru Egholm, standing at the window of a compartment beyond the end of the platform, saw her husband come running down the length of the carriages, eagerly, with delighted eyes.

Hurriedly she took leave of a couple of women fellow-travellers. They had lived together for the past three or four hours, and suddenly that was over....

Egholm clambered up on the footboard, and found a pleasant surprise. Sivert was not there!

True, there was little Emanuel, whom he had forgotten altogether for the moment. But then Emanuel was the child of victory. Or at least it was reasonable here, as ever, of two evils to choose the lesser.

Anna was a little puffy and dark under the eyes, but her cheeks were flushed with excitement. She and Hedvig handed out an endless array of packages, a lamp, some pictures, and the family treasure—the cut-glass bowl. One of the parcels was soft and round, and Anna proffered it with a warning:

“Be careful; don’t lay it down anywhere. There might come a dog....”

Egholm fingered it over, and made out the contours of a fowl. His heart softened. And then, as Anna stood feeling helplessly behind her with her lace boots, he took her in his arms, helped her out, and twisted her round. Her face was flushed with confusion. The features he cared for hid those he hated. For a second he read the anxious questioning in her eyes, then a wave of deep sympathy overwhelmed him, and he pressed her to him again and again.

“I’m so glad you’ve come, Anna, my dear, I’m so glad.”

Omnibus-Jeppe was to take the heavier luggage that was in the van.

“H’m,” said Jeppe, scratching the back of his head, “there’s enough to stock a shop.”

Egholm scratched his head likewise, and stared helplessly at the bundles of bedding and Anna’s flower-pots—a whole score of them.

“What on earth d’you want to drag all that about for?” he asked irritably.

“Oh, look! They’ve broken the calla there,” wailed Fru Egholm, kneeling down beside it. “Broken right down at the root. And it was just coming out....”

“Oh, never mind that!”

“Give me a twenty-fiveøre, and I’ll look after the lot,” said Jeppe, melting at once before feminine grief.

The family had as much as they could carry. Egholm walked with pictures under either arm; his wife took the fowl, the cut-glass bowl, and the flower-pot with the calla. Leave it—because it was broken? No, she could never be so cruel.

Emanuel’s perambulator lay upside down, revealing the advertisement placard for somebody’s beer that had been tacked over the hole in the bottom. Hedvig tipped it right side up. It would hold a good deal, being of a peculiarly low, broad shape. Emanuel was ultimately placed among the various goods there disposed, as one surrounded by trophies in a triumphal car. He sat looking round with big blue eyes under his little white cap. It was a girl’s cap, really—a sort of sunbonnet that had lain in a drawer since Hedvig’s time, but—Herregud!what did it matter? At his age....

Egholm walked in front, the pictures waving up and down like a pair of wings as he described the view with great enthusiasm to his wife.

The slow-moving flood of the Belt glittered in newborn sunlight. The fields lay green and open under God’s sky. The landscape looked one freshly and boldly in the eyes—Anna marked how the very air tasted utterly different from that about Eriksens’ sour little patch of yard and garden. Her husband voiced her thought exactly when he said:

“I don’t believe there’s a prettier spot in all the world.”

“But the town?” she asked in surprise. “Where is it?”

“Right up there in the bay. See the red church-tower there, and the Custom House—that yellow place standing out against the great black woods? The town’s as sheltered as a bird in its nest. And look, that’s Jutland over there—see how close it looks, and the two lines of coast all soft against each other. Looks almost as if they were dancing.”

“And look at the white sails on the blue water!”

“Yes. I know that one with the topsail. That’s Etatsraad Brodersen’s. You know, ‘Brodersen’s Pure Grape.’ He’s the great man of the town.”

“It’s a lovely place.”

“Ah, but wait till it’s summer, and the beeches are out,” said Egholm, with bright eyes. “We’ll go out one day together. I’ll show you it all.”

Tears welled up into Anna’s eyes. What a marvellous place was this Knarreby, that could so change her husband altogether! Actually running down the platform to meet them as if it had been visitors of rank. And no grumbling or scolding because the train was late.

Egholm was himself moved. He blinked his eyes and looked away.

Out on the Belt, Brodersen’s cutter was cruising about. It was on the water early this year. There—it was tacking now. Stood for a moment straight as a white church, and then off on the new tack.Heavens, how it heeled over! Why don’t they let go the sheet? Ah, there she was up again! But Egholm had somehow slipped out of his former joyous mood, and said a trifle absently and wearily:

“Yes, it’s a pretty place; that’s true.”

Fru Egholm did not notice his altered tone. She found the moment opportune to put in a word for one that had been left behind in Odense, one that had stood on the platform in the early morning, waving and waving, till he suddenly collapsed, as if the ground had been snatched from under his feet. Was he not to have a share in the promised land?

“Sivert sent his love. He couldn’t come, of course, poor child.”

“No, thank goodness!”

The mother started—it was the old voice again. Her rejoicing had hurried her forward along a path that ended in a morass—she must drag her steps back now, uncertain of her way.

Listlessly she followed Egholm’s account of some excursion of his own.

“We came round the point to an island that was like a floating forest—Heireøen, it’s called. We put in there, alongside a pavilion place, and had steak and onions.”

“Wasn’t it dreadfully expensive—at a place like that?” Anna’s voice was dull and joyless as her own meals and the children’s had been every day,Sundays and weekdays alike, as far back as she could remember.

“I don’t know. It was Henrik Vang that paid. That is to say—he knew the man who kept the place, and so....”

“Henrik Vang? Oh, that’ll be the one you wrote about. His father’s got a little eating-house or something.”

“Little eating-house! Good Lord!—the finest hotel in the place. First-class restaurant!”

Anna had no grounds for disapproval, but, none the less, she murmured:

“H’m. A fellow like that....”

The family had reached the outskirts of the town. As they walked on, curtains were moved aside, and a nose-tip here and there showed through. In the little shops, the shopkeepers dropped their paper bags and crowded with their customers to see.

Hedvig enjoyed being thus a centre of attraction. She arranged the newspaper-holder, the plaster figure, and the lamp in a specially attractive fashion, drew herself up, tossed her head, and only wished they might have to walk all through the town. As it happened, she was disappointed.

Egholm, whose fingers were getting sore with holding the pictures, tripped on faster.

“There—that’s where I live,” he said, out of breath. “Pick up your legs a bit, can’t you?”

“Where?”

“The grey house there, with the gateway.”

All else was forgotten now in the anxiety to see the place that was to be their home. It was a long, low house. A gateway, two narrow shop-windows, a door, and four pairs of windows beside. Over the entrance was a placard inscribed with black letters on a white ground: “H. Andreasen. Coffins and Funeral Furnishings.”

A very respectable house it was, plastered with cement. And now they could see the show-case on one side of the entrance, with the photos in. No dream, then, no misunderstanding. It was here they were to live.

“Lord, isn’t it fine!” cried Hedvig.

Anna sighed resignedly, even perhaps in relief.

Saw and plane stopped suddenly. The men wiped the cobwebs from the panes and looked out, their bare arms gleaming against their blue overalls.

Anna hurried in through the entrance, but stopped inside, and looked back at her husband inquiringly.

There was someone in there!She could feel it, and it made her ill at ease. She was ready to drop as it was, from weariness, and longed to hide herself between four walls, to get her breath in peace, and set about to make things comfortable for her husband, the children, and herself.

“What are you waiting for? Go along in—the door’s open.”

“But there’s someone ... I thought I....”

“Oh, that’ll be Vang, I suppose,” said Egholm, opening the door himself. “Hullo, Vang, here we are again. Nobody been, I suppose? No, no. Well, here’s my little party.”

Vang was seated in the middle of the bed, with his hat on, and a cold cigar at one corner of his mouth. The bed had sunk under the weight of his heavy frame; the dirty sheets and spotted blankets were twirled up as by a waterspout.

“My husband wrote about you,” Fru Egholm stammered with an effort. She stood holding her flower-pot and her parcels as if dreading to soil the paint of table and seats.

“Him and me,” said Vang in a solemn bass, letting his chin fall forward on his chest—“him and me we’ve been as one. But I’m going now, all right.”

“Why, what for?” said Egholm, touched. “There’s no need....” He took Vang’s arm.

“Ah, but I must. Henrik Vang can’t stay where there’s women about.”

“What’s turned you so serious all at once?”

Vang smoothed the bedclothes, evidently embarrassed.

“It’s not just making a fuss, to be asked again. I know I’d rather stay. Where should I go to, anyway?”

“You’ve a charming wife at home,” said Egholmmischievously. “But stay here if you like. I’ll be only too pleased.”

“Home? I’d rather walk in water up to my neck the rest of the day. But if you really mean it—if you’ll let me stay where I am—still as a mouse, and never disturb a soul, why, I’d just love it.”

“Do, then, Vang, do.”

Vang turned with a smile towards Fru Egholm, who was removing her hat in silence at the farthest corner of the room.

“I’ll stay, then, just as I am, in what I’ve got on. My clothes aren’t much, anyway. And I’m mostly drunk as well. But when you get to know me,Frue, you’ll see that right down inside I’m the man I am. Son of Sofus Vang. First-class hotel, excellent cuisine, and choicest wines—with terrace overlooking the water!”

Hedvig burst out laughing. She and her mother began carrying in the things Omnibus-Jeppe had piled up outside.

Egholm saw how he and Vang were gradually being immured behind the various belongings. It even seemed to him that now and then something was thrust with unnecessary harshness against his legs, and a threatening look crept into his eyes. In the midst of a flow of speech addressed to Vang, he broke off suddenly, and said in a voice of command:

“Take that stuff into the other room!”

“I will, dear. Let me,” said Fru Egholm. “But it looked like rain, you know.”

“Not that door,” said Egholm angrily.

“But these are the kitchen things.” Fru Egholm had already seen that the other door opened into an attic or box-room or something of the sort. “Isn’t that the kitchen there?”

“Kitchen! That’s my dark-room.” Egholm spoke as might a God to whom creations are the merest trifle. The place might have been a kitchen. Well and good—Egholm spoke the words: “Let there be a dark-room.”

“You’ll have to manage in there—at any rate, for the present.” He nodded towards the nondescript apartment opposite. “Make that a kitchen.”

“But, my dear....” Fru Egholm pulled herself together with a poor attempt at a smile. Then she shook her head; it was hopeless to try to explain to the uninitiate what a little world in itself a kitchen is. “The stove....” she managed to protest. “There’s not even a heating-stove in there.”

She waited still, with the chest of utensils in her hands, before the forbidden door. Shemustget in there.

Egholm reflected that it was perfectly true about there being no stove. It was for that reason he had had his bed in here for the winter. He could find no way out of the difficulty, and grew furious—foreven he was not so far almighty as to create a kitchen where no kitchen was.

“All right, get along with you, then?” he said, pushing her in, and Hedvig, with Emanuel in her arms, behind her. “There you are! But mind! No fooling about with any of my things!”

The door opened with a queer sucking noise—it had been caulked with strips of cardboard and cloth.

Hedvig and her mother stood aghast, while Egholm thrust past them and began moving his bottles with the easy familiarity of habit.

All the windows were darkened but one, that glared red as a furnace door. They could see nothing save their own hands, which looked strange and uncanny in the red light.

“Egholm, you surely don’t mean to say we’re to do the cooking here? When you can’t see your hand before your face!”

Egholm stepped across and shut the door behind them; then, turning to his wife, he brought his face close down to hers, and whispered in a voice that seethed like a leak in an overheated boiler:

“Look here! You’re not going to come along and ruin the business for me now, so don’t you think it. If I can see to do my developing, you can see to cook. You understand?”

And he went on with a further flow of words, furious, though subdued.

Fru Egholm writhed.

“But, Egholm ... there’s noroom! I can’t even see the stove.... Oh....”

She still clung to a faint hope that he might be brought to see things with her eyes, and realise how unreasonable it was to ask her.

“Very well. I’ll give you a lamp. My dark-room lamp should be about here somewhere.”

His fingers moved among rattling bottles on the stove.

“Here it is—no. Now, where the devil....”

A bottle upset; he grasped at it hurriedly and knocked over another; the liquid gurgled out into a pool on the floor.

“A basin—quick, give me a basin! My silver nitrate ... quick, a basin!”

They reached about for one in haste and confusion.

“Open the door so we can see!” cried Hedvig. But at the same moment her father came towards them. His face looked as if smeared with blood in the light from the red-covered pane; his teeth showed between parted lips.

“You—you’re the serpent in the garden!” he hissed.

“Oh, don’t!” she cried, her voice rising to a scream.

Emanuel was beginning to cry. Hedvig tried to wriggle through with him to the door, but stepped on the basin her father had just set on the floor.

This was too much for Egholm. He felt he must either discharge the current within, or be fused by it, like an overcharged wire.

He staggered one step back, then forward again. His arms rose up as if with an inner force of their own; then with his full strength he struck his clenched fist in his wife’s face.

Once again, and once again he struck, the flesh of her checks squelching under the blows. Then he stumbled out, and closed the door carefully behind him.

Vang was seated on the bed exactly as before. What could he say to him? It was the first time any stranger had witnessed a scene of this sort. What was the use of starting upon heart-rending explanations, which Vang would never understand? And how much of the trouble had been audible through the close-padded door?

Vang gets to his feet; he must go now—yes, he must. There is something cowed about him; he speaks in a low voice, and does not look up. And Egholm, suddenly aware of Anna’s sobbing and Hedvig’s uncontrolled blubbering plainly heard through the door, realises that Vang must have been able to follow the drama through all its painful details.

And now he is going off, convinced that Egholm is a cruel, cruel brute.

It must not be! Egholm feels now, morestrongly than ever before, that hecanbe so good, so good!

“No, no; you mustn’t go!” he cries, as Vang steps cautiously over the bath full of flower-pots. He grips him by the arm, anxious to prove his all-embracing affection on the spot. “You mustn’t go now I’m in all this mess. Didn’t you say we’d been as one together? Wait a bit; there’s something I want to talk to you about.”

Egholm sat down on a ragged mattress, and covered his face with his hands.

If only he had something—some precious gift—to offer Vang. But he had nothing—not a copperørein his pocket; not a thing. Not so much as a bite of bread for himself, still less for Vang. And what about the others?...

The fowl!The thought of it seemed to flow like something rich and soft and fat right out to his fingers. He straightened himself up and looked round—yes, there it was, in the perambulator.

“I was going to ask you to supper, Vang. My wife’s brought a fowl along, a fine fat bird, almost as big as a drake. But I suppose you’ve something better for supper yourself?”

He gauged Vang’s hunger by the rumbling of his own empty paunch, and made every effort to persuade him.

“A fine bird, a delicious bird; the size of a drake as nearly as can be.”

Egholm was not quite sure whether a duck or a drake would be the larger, but took the word as it came into his head, to help him in his need.

Vang could not resist. He smacked his lips, and said:

“I could go down to Father’s place, of course. They can’t refuse me anything there, after all, though they do keep me waiting and make things as uncomfortable as they can. If only I could be sure your wife wouldn’t mind....”

“Not a bit, not a bit,” said Egholm cheerfully, relieved that all was well again. He had been cruel, by an unfortunate chance, but now he had wiped that out. Briskly he took up the parcel with the delicious bird, and even played ball with it as he went towards the dark-room door. The business in there before sickened him unspeakably.

There was a moment of deadly silence as he opened the door, but hardly had he taken a step forward when he ran against a shadow that would not let him pass. Next moment he felt Hedvig’s skinny hands like claws, one at his chest, the other gripping his throat, as she hissed out:

“You dare to touch Mother again—you dare! Quick, Mother, take Emanuel and run!”

Egholm was more astonished than angry at first. What was all this?

But—ugh! it hurt! He tried in vain to wrest her hands away; then he struck at her head. Butshe ducked down between his arms and butted him over against the stove.

“Run—run quick! I’ve got him!”

“Let go, you little devil!—oh, help! she’s strangling me!”

“Hedvig, what are you doing?—Hedvig, dearest child! Let go, do; it’s your father!” Fru Egholm tried to pull her off.

Then Hedvig realised that the day was lost. She loosened her hold, and let Mother and Father wrest an arm to either side, till she stood as if crucified up against the wall, her head drooping, and yellow wisps of hair falling over her flushed face. And she fell to crying, with a horrible penetrating wail.

Egholm had still by no means recovered from his astonishment. He coughed, and began rubbing his neck, speculating the while on some appropriate punishment for the presumptuous girl.

“Well, you’re a nice little beast, you are,” he said. But he could hardly find more to say. There were not actually words in the language for criminals of that sex.

“You overgrown hobbledehoy, falling upon your own father, your own flesh and blood. I never heard of such a thing. If you had your deserts, you’d be bundled off to gaol this minute, you disgraceful young scoundrel.”

Suddenly he began tearing down the planks and cardboard from the window, without a word ofexplanation, but with emphatic jerks and crashes that fell in time to his words and gave them added weight.

“You wait—I shan’t—forget, you—squat-nosed—little—guttersnipe.”

But for every tug at the flimsy covering, the light poured in more violently, like a wonderful grace of God. Both Hedvig and her mother, despite their indignation, could not help craning their necks to look, as the corner of a garden, with budding trees, came moving, as it were, towards them. Even Emanuel opened his eyes wide, and lifted his little hands towards the light.

Once he had begun, there seemed no end to Egholm’s willingness to oblige. He cut the string by which the door was fastened, and tore away the padding from all sides.

“There!Now, are you satisfied?” he asked, with great politeness.

But there was something wanting yet to render his wife’s satisfaction complete. Those bottles.... All along the shelves and dresser were rows of bottles, in every shape, thickness, and colour. Many of them were ticketed with complicated chemical names, and some bore the awe-inspiring death’s-head poison label. Egholm had strung a tangle of lines from wall to wall, on which his photos hung to dry, exactly as when Hedvig played dolls’ washing-day.

And the kitchen table was a veritable map of stains.

“They cost something, those did,” said Egholm. “That’s my silver nitrate.” And he seemed as proud as if he had paved the way for his wife’s arrival with pieces of eight.

He helped to set the numerous bowls and glass plates aside, and murmured regretfully:

“Well, well, anyhow, you’ve had your way.”

“Yes, but....”

“I hope you can see now, at any rate. And now, for Heaven’s sake, make haste and get that fowl done. I’ve asked Vang to supper.”

“But, Egholm! You don’t mean to say....” Fru Egholm almost screamed.

“Beginning again, are you?” he said threateningly. But at sight of her face, bruised and already colouring from his recent blows, he turned away.

“We must do something for him. He’s been a help to me from the first day I came. And he’s got a miserable home.”

“We’ve neither knives nor forks—we haven’t even plates.” Fru Egholm dared not say too much just now, but hurried to unpack a box, that the contents might speak for her. There were a few cups without handles, five or six plates, some of them soup-plates, but no two alike. One had a pattern of flowers, another birds; a third was ornamented with a landscape. Two of the knives lacked handles, and nearly all the forks were one prong short.

“There! I don’t know what you think?”

Egholm was on the point of breaking out again, but suddenly he laughed.

“Oh, an elegant dinner service. Splendid! splendid!” And he danced about the floor.

“We haven’t a single dish, or a tureen. And his father keeps a real hotel—we can’t serve it up in the saucepan.”

“Oh yes, you can. Vang and I, we’re not the sort to stand on ceremony. Wait a minute, though—a dish ... I can let you have a dish.”

He picked up a big white rinsing-dish from among his own equipment, fished up some plates that were lying in the bottom, and tipped the liquid into a bottle.

“There you are—real porcelain. Now the set’s complete. But mind you wash it out well, or you’ll send us all to kingdom come. And, for Heaven’s sake, make haste. I’ve got to keep talking to him all the time, and you’ve no idea what a business that is.”

Whereupon Egholm danced out of the doorway, leaving his wife, confused and helpless, with the dripping poison dish in her hands.

Hedvig sat in front of the stove, crumpling up newspapers and thrusting them in through the open door, to keep the fire from going out entirely.

“This will never do,” said her mother, wringing her hands. Egholm was tramping up and down in the next room, stopping every now and then to open the door and ask if the supper wasn’t nearly ready. His face was pale—he was always most dangerous when he was hungry.

“Huh! Let them wait,” said Hedvig.

“Run outside, dear, and see if you can’t find some bits of something—a piece of board or some twigs or anything that’ll burn. I fancy I saw some stuff under that bush in the corner.”

Hedvig was always happiest when she found a chance of using her legs. She explored the yard across and across, quartering like a hound in all directions, and finding not a little in the way of fuel. When she had filled her apron, there was a knocking at one of the windows. At first she tried to ignore it, and was hurrying in with her findings, but the knocking was repeated, and more loudly. She turned angrily and looked in.

A brown-eyed young workman in the carpenter’s shop stood beckoning to her, both hands full of beautiful lumps of newly cut wood.

This was a language Hedvig understood; she picked up her heels and ran to the workshop door.

“You the photographer’s?” he asked, with a bashful grin and a slight lisp in his voice, as he laid the blocks like an offering in her apron.

“Yes,” said Hedvig. “We haven’t had time to get in any wood as yet. Mother and I only came to-day. We’re going to have chicken soup for dinner. There’s visitors.”

“But what are the bones for?” said the man, picking about among the contents of the apron.

Hedvig flushed, but, ready witted as ever, answered, laughing:

“Oh. Perhaps you don’t do that here. In Odense we always use bones for the fire when we can get them. They burn almost better than wood.”

“What’s your name?”

“Hedvig Egholm. And what’s yours? You’re the carpenter’s son, I suppose?”

“No, I’m only working here, that’s all. My room’s just at that end—like to come and see it?”

“No, thanks. I must make haste in.”

“Well, then, come this evening, or to-morrow. Will you?” he asked eagerly, routing about in all the corners for more wood.

But Hedvig only laughed, and shook her heavyyellow plaits. She came back to her mother with a load that reached to her chin. There was no need to use the bones, after all—they burnt well enough, it is true, but stank abominably in the burning.

Emanuel was given a row of the neat wooden blocks, set up on the table before him.

“Look—there’s the puff-puff,” said Hedvig.

The child laughed all over his face, but a moment later he was nibbling at the engine.

In the next room Egholm was still talking about the manifold vicissitudes of his life.

He had started as a grocer’s assistant in Helsingør, then in Aalborg; after that he had been a photographer, in the time of the war, when the Austrians were there. He had made a fortune, but it had vanished in an attempt to double it, in Göteborg, Sweden, where there was no photographer at that time at all. Then on to Copenhagen with but a few small coins remaining, and, despite this adverse beginning, the possession of the biggest photographic studio in the town a few months later.

This was Egholm’schef-d’œuvre; he had told the story of it a hundred times. And by frequent repetition, it had gained a certain style, as he omitted more and more of the commonplace. He told of his bold advertisements—a new departure altogether—his growing staff of assistants, the eagerness of the public to come first, and the tearful envy of his competitors. And when, in the flight of his telling,he reached its highest point, where he really was the greatest photographer in the place—he stopped. He felt he must remain there on those heights, above the clouds; he wished his hearers always to remember him as there and so. The miserable descent he passed over, and began as a matter of course with his appointment on the railways, as station assistant, at a wretched rate of pay.

Vang did not seem to miss the intervening chapters; he sat wallowing in the delicious smell of cooking that came through from the kitchen.

Egholm told of his railway period, how he had rushed about the country, now at some desolate little station on the Jutland moors, now in big places like Odense or Frederikshavn. He sighed, and passed over the conflicts with authority, and his dismissal. No, he would not think of those things now; not a thought. He turned abruptly to the annals of the Brethren of St. John. True, there was much that was disappointing about his relations with that community, but, after all, there had been something grand in its way about the final meeting. Had he not stood there alone, and told them the truth, in such a wise that even the fellow from Copenhagen had polished his glasses and shaken in his shoes, finding nothing to say in return? Had he not gained the victory? They had thrown him out—but was not that in itself sufficient evidence that his words were true, and had pierced them accordingly?

“Yes, and then I heard a shout from someone down by the door; it was Meilby. You know, the photographer I used to teach English. He was rather like you, by the way, Vang—the same gentle sort of eyes....”

Augh! Egholm realised suddenly that he had said that once before to-day. He had got to the end of his repertoire. A sense of shame came over him, he cleared his throat, and cried in a forced voice:

“Hi, Anna! Vang says he’ll have his money back if the performance doesn’t begin very soon.”

Vang grunted; that was the sort of thing he understood. But Fru Egholm shivered in fear.

“Yes, yes, in a minute—five minutes more! Hedvig, for Heaven’s sake, look and see if it’s nearly done?”

“Yes; it’s peeling now,” reported Hedvig, and her mother left the horseradish to go and taste the soup.Herregud!it was as weak as ditchwater. She closed her eyes, and tasted once again, looking very much like a blinking hen herself. “Ditchwater, simply!”

“Hedvig!” She routed out a pocket-handkerchief, and untied a twenty-fiveørefrom one corner. “Run out and get a quarter of butter, there’s a dear.”

“Well, and what then?” she said sullenly to herself. “It’s got to be used, and I’m not sorry I didit. Egholm always likes his things a little on the rich side, and now after he’s been so angry....”

It was hard to please him anyway when he was in that mood. Who would have thought he could have turned so furious just for a little remark like that?... What was it now she had happened to say?

Her brain was puzzling to remember it as she bustled about the final preparations. She talked to herself in an undertone, weeping silently the while.

“Anna, what do you think you’re doing out there?” cried Egholm.

Hedvig answered with a brief, sharp word, which her mother tried to cover with a “Sh!”

“Yes, dear—yes,” she called.

At the last moment she had hit upon a new and ingenious plan for saving her housewifely credit. The soup could be served up in the plates outside, and brought to table thus; the nasty dish thing could be used for the fowl itself. Fortunately, Vang might not know it was a developing tank at all.

Hedvig carried Vang’s plate in, walking stiffly as a wooden doll, and biting her lips till they showed white. But Vang, with a single friendly tug at her pigtails, made her open her mouth at once.

She laughed, showing her fresh white teeth. That was Hedvig’s way.

Vang gulped down the hot soup with a gurgling noise like a malstrøm. Egholm looked acrossnervously and enviously, and when Hedvig came round behind his chair, he reached out backwards greedily, but was sadly disappointed. No second helping—only the big geranium that Hedvig had brought in to set in the middle of the table. This was her mother’s last brilliant effort; no one could see now that the plates were not alike. She had even fastened paper round the pot, as if it were a birthday tribute.

They ate in silence, but when the dish was empty, and each was wrenching at his skinny, fleshless wing, Vang let off his long-restrained witticism:

“Egholm, what do you say? Can a chicken swim?”

“Swim? A chicken? Why, I suppose so—no, that is, I don’t think so.”

“Well, shall we try if we can teach it?”

“I—I don’t quite follow.... And, anyhow there’s only the ghost of it left now, ha ha!”

“Well, there’s time yet, for it’s fluttering about just now in this little round pond just here!” Vang rose heavily, as if from repletion, snorting with delight at the success of his little joke, and drew a circle with one finger over the front of his well-expanded waistcoat. “All we want’s a drop of something for it to practise in!”

Hedvig was dispatched to buyakvavitwith the few coins Vang found in his pockets; he gave herthe most precise instructions as to which particular brand it was to be.

Egholm never drank with his meals as a rule, but that evening he took three glasses of the spirit, though it burned his throat like fire. Vang made no attempt to force him, but simply said “Skaal!” and tossed off his glass.

Egholm, however, had other reasons.

He had fancied he couldeathimself into oblivion, and was trying now—with just as little effect—to drink his trouble away. But it only grew the worse.

It was Anna’s eyes that would keep rising up before him.

Anna’s grey-green eyes, with their frightened look, in a setting of swollen, blue, and bloodshot flesh, that hung in pouches down on either side of her nose.

It was not that he felt remorse for what he had done; that did not cost him a thought. But the effects of it—thoseeyes—haunted him now, following him everywhere he turned, relentlessly, cruelly. He writhed, and sighed, overflowing with self-pity for his troubles.

Eating did not help him, drinking was equally futile; there was but one thing to do, then—to start talking again, before it grew worse. It was nothing to what it might be yet. And Egholm launched out into a sea of talk, diving into it, swimming outinto it, hoping to leave the thing that followed him outdistanced on the shore.

“And the money I made in Aalborg when the Austrians were there—you’ve no idea. My studio was simply besieged by all those black-bearded soldiers with their strings and stripes—and they’d no lack of cash, I can tell you. But then while they were sitting about waiting, there would come some slip of a lieutenant and turn the whole lot of them out to make way for him. And one dirty thief I remember that wouldn’t pay—between you and me, the photos were not much good, and that’s the truth. Showed him with three or four heads, you understand. But the General simply told him to pay up sharp, if he didn’t want his brains blown out. And that settled it. The General, of course, was a particular friend of mine. I’ll tell you while I think of it. It was this way. He wanted his photo taken, of course, like all the rest of them, but he must have it done up at the castle itself, in the great hall, and that was as dark as a cellar. I managed to get him out on the steps at last, though he cursed and swore all the time, and hacked about on the stone paving with his spurs. All the others got out of the way—sloped off like shadows—and there was I all alone with him, in a ghastly fright, and making a fearful mess of things with the camera. The interpreter had vanished, too. Then, just as I was ready, at the critical moment, you understand, I rapped out inGerman, ‘Now! Look pleasant, please!’ All photographers used to do that, you know, in those days. I said it without thinking.

“You should have seen him. First he swore like the very devil; you could almost see the blue flames dancing round him. But then he burst out laughing.

“He wanted me to go back to Austria with him. Tried all he knew to get me to go.”

Egholm sighed, and gazed vacantly before him, trying if the vision that haunted him were gone.

... Eyes, eyes. Eyes full of terror, set in patches of bruised flesh, and a drop of congealed blood just at the side of the nose....

He sprang violently to his feet, and started talking about Göteborg. The canals, where the women did their washing, the park, Trädgården, and Masthugget, where he had been out one Sunday. He talked Swedish, and gave a long account of a funeral—Anna had lost one child in Göteborg—the first.

Meanwhile, Vang was quietly getting to the bottom of the bottle, and when at last Egholm, weary of his desperate fluttering on empty words, flung himself down, Vang felt that it washisturn to speak.

“Ahem!—seeing no other gentleman has risen Henrik Vang now begs to propose: ‘The Ladies.’ My friend, my old and faithful friend, wake up and listen to my words. You have honoured me. You have invited me to share your board. The supperwas good—rather tough, that fowl, but, after all, that’s neither here nor there. In a word, you have done me a great honour, and I propose then to honour you in return. My friend, my old and faithful friend, you are aman. You can assert yourself, and get your own way. But Henrik Vang, he can’t. And I ask you now: How shall we gain the mastery over woman? There! That, my friend, is the problem—the problem of the future.”

“But is it true that she knocks you about?” asked Egholm, grasping eagerly at anything to turn the current of his own thoughts.

“Sh! Wait. Let me. I’ll tell you the whole story, from the time when she was parlourmaid at the house. I was only a boy, really—it was just after Mother had died. No—I won’t begin there, though. Nothing happened, really, till four or five years after, when I came home after I’d been out in the world a bit. Therese had got to be housekeeper, then. And Father, he said I was to leave her alone. Well, that of course put me on to her at once. There were enough of them about I could have got if I’d cared—what do you think? Ah, you don’t know the sort of man Henrik Vang was to look at in those days! But she was nearest to hand, of course. Ever so near.... Oh! And handsome, that she was. In two layers, as you might say, one outside the other. Father, he was after us whenever he got a chance. He offered me his gold watch to leave her alone, butI wasn’t such a fool. I’d have that anyway when he was gone, and I told him so. But then one day comes Therese and shows me where he’d been pinching her—arms black and blue. Well, I wasn’t going to stand that, you know, so we got a special licence, and went off and got married in Fredericia. Father, he didn’t know about it, of course, and when he sees us coming up the steps arm in arm, he says: ‘Henrik, do you know I’ve kept that girl ever since your mother died?’ ‘That’s as may be,’ says I. ‘Anyhow, she’s mine now.’ And then I up and showed him our wedding ring—cost me tenkroner, it did. Then says he: ‘Out you get—out of my house. A thousandkronera year, that’s all you’ll get. The hotel here I’ll keep, as long as I’ve strength to lift a glass!’”

The tears flowed down over Vang’s puffy purple cheeks. Egholm sniffed once or twice in sympathy, and forgot his own troubles for a moment.

Vang licked a last drop from the neck of the bottle, and went on:

“Well, you see, Therese had never expected that—nor had I. But don’t let’s talk about me. WhatwasI to expect? Drunken fool, that’s all. Perhaps it was that made her turn religious. I don’t know. I never can think things out. It tires me. Well, she said to me: ‘Look here, you get me a place at the Postmaster’s or the Stationmaster’s, or one of those you’re always drinking with.’ Well, theysimply laughed at me. But the religious lot, they didn’t mind. Only the worst of it was, from the time she set her thoughts on heaven, it’s been simply hell for me! Now, how d’you explain that?”

Egholm saw him off, going out to the gate with him, and at the same moment Hedvig opened the kitchen door. Yes, the dish was empty. A good thing they had helped themselves before it went in.

They lit the lamp, and began making things ready for the night. There was a jumble of things in every corner. Empty bottles by the dozen, and in one place she found a parcel, carefully wrapped in newspaper, containing the skins and skeleton remains of smoked herrings. Father, no doubt, thought that was the easiest way of clearing up after him.

“We’ll sleep in the little room, of course,” said Hedvig firmly to her mother.

“Ye—es,” said her mother quietly. But as Hedvig began dragging the bedding across, she put on her sternest face, and said:

“Never you mind where your mother’s to sleep or not to sleep. You know your Bible, don’t you, enough to remember about man and wife being one?”

“Ho!”

“But I’ll be there under the window. Yes, that’s best.”

“I know what I’d have done if I’d been you,”said Hedvig firmly. “I wouldn’t have washed that dish.”

“The one with the poison! Heavens, child—why, they might have been ever so ill!”

“They might have died!” Hedvig’s eyes were almost white to look at as she spoke.

At the same moment Egholm came in again, and now nothing was heard but the rattle of the iron bedsteads and flapping of sheets and bedclothes patted down. They shared for better or worse. Hedvig was given one iron bedstead in the little room to herself, but had to be content with a woollen blanket and her father’s old railway cloak for covering. Fru Egholm had to spread her mattress on the floor till they could get the settee screwed together; then she had a real down coverlet over.

Egholm began undressing without a word. His wife turned down the lamp—there were no curtains to the windows. They heard him drop his waistcoat over by the coal-scuttle, and his trousers by the door; then he threw himself on his bed, breathing heavily.

Fru Egholm stole into the little room, where Emanuel’s cradle was set against Hedvig’s bed, lest the master of the house should be disturbed.

Sleeping soundly, the little angel.

“Hedvig dear, you’ve kept your stockings on, haven’t you?”

“Oh, I’m warm enough—just feel here.” Shefound her mother’s hand and drew it down over some thick woollen stuff, that felt strange to the fingers.

“What—what is it?”

“Look and see!”

Fru Egholm closed the door and struck a match. There lay Hedvig, covered over with a curious black rug with a silver fringe round the edges and a cross in the centre.

For a moment she was dazed, then, calling up some distant memory, she exclaimed in horror:

“Heavens, child! Why, it’s the pall they use for the hearse! Wherever did you get it?”

“It was hanging on the stairs outside,” said Hedvig, with a grin.

“But you mustn’t. However could you, Hedvig! That you could ever dare.... Come! We must put it back at once.”

Hedvig made as if to obey, and drew the thing down, but the moment her legs were free, she turned a back-somersault and commenced a wild topsy-turvy dance in the air, waving her feet about like a catherine-wheel. Then suddenly she disappeared again under the pall, showing not so much as the tip of her nose.

The match went out. Fru Egholm shook her head anxiously, with a faint smile, and stole out of the room. Hedvig—what a child!

All was quiet in the parlour now. Egholm wasapparently asleep. Pray God he might wake in a better mood!

Anyhow, they had got that fellow Vang out of the house at last—and if she could manage it, he should not be in a hurry to come again. He’d a bad influence. The way he spoke about his wife—Egholm would never have talked like that himself! A nice sort of fellow, indeed—and his father owned a hotel!

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