Kristin had come to this point when they heard a scream from the bedroom upstairs. The silence beneath the bare elms was suddenly and harshly torn asunder. Perhaps it sounded to Peter and Hedvig like one of those strange, petrified screeches which sometimes fill the sleep of grown-ups with horror.
The little group dissolved instantly. The maid ran into the kitchen for the kettles. Anders strolled hesitatingly towards the lake, and Kristin pushed the children into the dining-room and turned the key. Peter and Hedvig were locked in with Old Hök, whose portrait hung there in the twilight over the leather-covered sofa. They were standing in the middle of the room and dared not look at the picture. They were expecting another scream that would make their hair stand on end again. They supposed it must come since they had been driven in here. But they heard no scream—for many long, long minutes all was still. By and by their eyes were irresistibly drawn to Old Hök. There he stood in a long, black coat. And his nose looked like a bird’s beak, and his fingers were clenched round his stick handle and looked like claws. But worst of all were his eyes, for wherever you stood they stared straight down at you, so that you felt that your blood ran cold. It had, of course, been horrid to listen to Kristin, but then, it was not altogether uncanny, for there was mixed with it a curiously pleasant sensation as when you step into a pool and the cold water oozes into your stockings. But this! Oh this was ever so much worse! Their childish fear, awakened out of its semi-sleep, now fluttered wildly round Old Hök—and Kristin’s superstition and her prophecies of woe hovered over them in new and terrifying shapes.
Peter was perhaps not so sensitive to the more remote horrors. His fears fastened on what was nearest to hand. Very small as he was, he stood there staring at the grey and tattered ghost of poverty. His anxiety was centred on a big signet ring that Old Hök was wearing on his finger. He wore it, of course, because he was awfully rich. But where was the ring now? Old Hök’s eyes pursued him with the question: Where is my ring now? Peter knew nothing of it. His father had not worn it, and it was not in his mother’s jewel box. Supposing Anders had stolen it! Or fat Lotten in the kitchen? Fancy if they should steal everything at Selambshof, so that he, Peter, had to sit without any clothes in the forest and starve and shiver. Fancy if that was why Mamma lay up there and screamed so terribly. Yes, he knew it was Mamma who had screamed.