"Do you think there's pardon for me?" came at last from the bed; and the priest had to answer.
"Will you pray for me?" said Lars, turning his quid in his mouth. The priest rose and folded his hands; but what should he pray? He thought of Wangen. But the sun shone brightly in upon the fir-strewn floor, throwing a few beams across the old skin coverlet and on the old man's shirt. It was like a message from Him who shines upon the good and the evil, thought the priest, and there was such poverty and helplessness in this little cottage, and the two poor old people filled him with a desire to be merciful, and he began to pray God to be merciful.
When he ended, the wife was crying, and the old man lay with his hands folded upon the coverlet, and the tears running down his cheeks. When the priest sat down, he said: "Will you give me the sacrament?"
The priest rose mechanically and opened his bag. He heard the swallows flying past the window outside in the sunshine, and the starling that had its nest up under the eaves. It was like another message to tell him that life was greater than man's idea of right and wrong.
When he stood ready in his priest's robes, after pouring the wine into the chalice he had brought with him, he said with bowed head: "Listen, Lars. The trial is next week. Won't you ask your wife to go and give evidence for you? I can confirm what you have now confessed?"
"Oh, yes," said the old man, looking longingly at the chalice. The wife sighed upon her bench, but came up and took the quid out of her husband's mouth, and laid it on the window-sill.
When the priest had given the sacrament, and had packed up his gown again, he sat a little longer by the dying man's bedside. It seemed as if Lars had only kept up in expectation of the sacrament and the forgiveness of his sins, and that he now suddenly began to sink. Once he opened his eyes and turned them upon his wife. She understood him, and took the half-chewed quid from the window-sill and put it into his mouth; and Lars looked at her, as much as to say: "Yes, that was it."
The priest rose, and was taking his departure when the dying man looked once more at the priest and then affectionately at his wife, and whispered: "Oh no! She mustn't be made to go and give evidence, for he'll take the cottage from her if she does."