"And now when he hears this, how he will exult!"
His worries, which had vanished in the possibility of danger out on the ice, now returned, and he recollected having seen Wangen intoxicated on several occasions in town. "And that's the man I've helped!"
At last he turned up an avenue, at the end of which could be seen the dark mass of the Norby buildings against the fir-clad slope. In the large dwelling-house there were lights in only two or three of the windows. A large black dog came bounding towards Knut with delighted barks, leaping up in front of the horse, which snapped at it.
The stable-man came with a lantern, and held the horse while Norby, stiff with sitting still so long, got slowly out of the sledge.
Beams of light flickered across the snow from lanterns passing in and out of the doors of the cow-sheds and stables that surrounded the large farm-yard on three sides. To the left of the barn stood a separate little dwelling-house, in which lived as pensioners old disabled servants, whom Norby would not allow to become a burden upon the parish.
"Put a cloth over the horse, and don't give him water just yet," said he to the stable-man, as, whip in hand, he tramped up the steps to the house, followed by the dog.
MARIT NORBY was proud--with the peasant women, because she looked down upon them, and with the wives of the local authorities, because she was afraid they might look down upon her.
"Oh, of course," she would say with her own peculiar smile, "we who live in the country know nothing at all!"
"You are late," she said, when Knut came in. She was sitting with her knitting in the little room between the kitchen and the large sitting-rooms. She wore a little cap upon her silvery hair, like the pastor's wife; and her face was refined and handsome, with a firm mouth and prominent chin.
"The school meeting was a lengthy one," said Knut, as he stood rubbing his hands in front of the stove.
"How did it go?" she asked, meaning the matter that she knew Knut had wanted to carry in the school committee that day.
"It went of course as badly as it could go," said Knut, turning his back to the stove. He thought he saw a sarcastic gleam in his wife's eye when he faced her, and his anger rose. Was it not enough to have had strangers worrying him to-day, without having his own people begin too? Of course she thought him a poor creature; and what would she say when she heard about Wangen?
