It was bitterly cold in the place where he was confined. When was this imprisonment to be at an end? Though innocent, he had been cast into wretchedness and solitude--that was his fate. How things had been ordained for him in this world, he had now time to think over. Why had he been thus treated--his portion made so hard to bear? Well, this would be revealed "in that other life" which assuredly awaits all. In the humble cottage that belief had been engrafted into him, which, amidst the grandeur and brightness of his Spanish home, had never shone upon his father's heart: _that_ now, in the midst of cold and darkness, became his consolation, God's gift of grace, which never can deceive.
The storms of spring were now raging; the roaring of the German Ocean was heard far inland; but just when the tempest had lulled, it sounded as if hundreds of heavy wagons were driving over a hard tunnelled road. Jörgen heard it even in his dungeon, and it was a change in the monotony of his existence. No old melody could have gone more deeply to his heart than these sounds--the rolling ocean--the free ocean--on which one can be borne throughout the world, fly with the wind, and wherever one went have one's own house with one, as the snail has his--to stand always upon home's ground, even in a foreign land.
How eagerly he listened to the deep rolling! How remembrances hurried through his mind! "Free--free--how delightful to be free, even without soles to one's shoes, and in a coarse patched garment!" The very idea brought the warm blood rushing into his cheeks, and he struck the wall with his fist in his vain impatience. Weeks, months, a whole year had elapsed, when a gipsy named Niels Tyv--"the horse-dealer," as he was also called--was arrested, and then came better times: it was ascertained what injustice had been done to Jörgen.
To the north of Ringkjöbing Fiord, at a small country inn, on the evening of the day previous to Jörgen's leaving home, and the committal of the murder, Niels Tyv and Morten had met each other. They drank a little together, not enough certainly to get into any man's head, but enough to set Morten talking too freely. He went on chattering, as he was fond of doing, and he mentioned that he had bought a house and some ground, and was going to be married. Niels thereupon asked him where was the money which was to pay it, and Morten struck his pocket pompously, exclaiming in a vaunting manner,--