Svarten had got the reins quite down over his forelegs; a little more and he would be stepping on them.
From the gentle trot, into which he had at last fallen, he began to walk.
Then he turned his head round--and remained standing in the middle of the road.
The whip-lash hung down as before. The captain sat there immovable with his head a little tipped back--
They were still on the level, and Svarten stood patiently looking toward the Gilje hill, which lay a bit farther on, until he turned his head round again two or three times and looked into the cariole.
Now he began to paw on the ground with one forefoot, harder and harder--so that the lumps flew about.
A good hour later, in the twilight, there was a conversation in an undertone out in the yard, and the sound of cariole wheels which moved slowly.
Great-Ola was called down to the gate by the man down yonder at the Sörgaard; he had met the cariole with the captain down in the road.
"What is it?" Ma's voice was heard to say through the darkness from the porch.
At the entrance of the churchyard, a week later, old Svarten and young Svarten stood before an empty sleigh.
A salute before and after the lowering into the ground informed the parish that here lay Captain Peter Wennechen Jäger.
About twenty years had passed, and the traffic down in the country store and inn showed an entirely different style both in building and goods. There had also begun to be a route for travellers and tourists in the summer up through the valley.
The snow drifted, so that it lay high up on the steps this Sunday afternoon.
But in the little warm room behind the shop there was jollity. He had come up again, he, the delightful Grip; and now he was sitting there with the shopkeeper, the bailiff's man, and the execution-server.
Only let him get a little something to drink.
"Your health, you old execution-horse!" came in Grip's voice--"When I think of all those whom you have taken the skin off without ever getting any part in the roast, I can get up a kind of sympathy for you; we are both of us cheated souls."
"Although I have not acquired the learning and sciences"--began the gray-headed man who had been spoken to, somewhat irritated--"I insist on--"
"Everything lawful, yes--oh--oh--never mind that, Reierstad. Consider that science is the sea of infinity, and a few drops more or less do not count either for or against. Just peep out a little into the starry night, and you will have a suspicion that the whole of the planet, my friend, on which you parade in such a very small crevice, is only one pea in the soup--soup, I say--it is all the same. Isn't that so, Mr.--Mr. Simensen?"