He had to stoop to enter. The ceiling was low, too, so that he had to keep his head bent. A saucepan of water was steaming on the fire, the floor was white and strewn with fir twigs, the wife was sitting dressed in her best with a hymn-book in her hand, and in bed, beneath an old skin coverlet, lay Lars Kleven, in a shirt so white that it must have been put on at the moment the priest was seen at the bottom of the hill. The priest first shook hands with the wife, and then went to the bed.
Lars said nothing, pressed his lips together, and looked at the priest. It was his wife who answered.
"Oh, mercy! How frightened I was that he'd be gone before the priest came!"
The priest took the old man's hand. It was as hard as horn, and quite cold. The furrowed, weather-beaten face was motionless, and the old eyes looked up dully. Now and then his mouth moved, for he still had his quid to chew. The pastor sat down.
"He has something to confess to you," she said.
"Indeed?" The priest looked kindly at the old man in the bed.
The dying man suddenly surprised him by sending a squirt of tobacco-juice out of his mouth on to the floor. "It was about the inquiry," he then said, looking anxiously at the priest.
"He wanted to go and give evidence," said the wife; "but he hadn't the courage to give evidence against Norby."
The priest looked expectantly at Lars, who kept his eyes all the time anxiously on him, still chewing his quid.
"Do you think there's pardon for me?" he asked at length.
"When I didn't go and give evidence to the truth, even though God told me to?"
"Are you sure you knew the truth then, Lars?"
"He went with Norby to town that time when he signed the paper," said the wife, who now stood by the table with her hymn-book in front of her, looking anxiously at the priest.
Pastor Borring sat looking at the floor for a little while.
"And now he thinks there's no pardon for him," said the wife, wiping her eyes. "But I tell him that Christ died for that sin too?"
The priest still looked down at the floor, but he felt the eyes of the dying man eagerly fixed upon him, and he knew that he must answer when he met those eyes.
If Pastor Borring had been alone and uninfluenced by the moment, he would have answered: "Even if Christ died for your sins, and even if you get to heaven, Wangen may suffer just as much in consequence of your sin." He had it in his mind to say it, too, but it was another matter to look up and meet the old, frightened eyes.