r across the snow, past houses, past
trees, past a terror-struck face, that stared out through a window-pane,
round stacks of grain and through farm-yards, where dogs howled and tore
at their chains. He ran round the front wing of a building and stood
suddenly before a brightly, restlessly lighted window. The light did him
good, the flames yielded to it; he went to the window and looked in. It
was a brew-room, a girl stood at the hearth and stirred the kettle. The
light which she held in her hand had a slightly reddish sheen on account
of the dense fumes. Another girl was sitting down, plucking poultry, and
a third was singeing it over a blazing straw-fire. When the flames grew
weaker, new straw was put on, and they flared up again; then they again
became weaker and still weaker; they went out. Mogens angrily broke a
pane with his elbow, and slowly walked away. The girls inside screamed.
Then he ran again for a long time with a low moaning. Scattered flashes
of memory of happy days came to him, and when they had passed the
darkness was twice as black. He could not bear to think of what had
happened. It was impossible for it to have happened. He threw himself
down on his knees and raised his hands toward heaven, the while he
pleaded that that which had happened might be as though it had not
occurred. For a long time he dragged himself along on his knees with his
eyes steadfastly fixed on the sky, as if afraid it might slip away from
him to escape his pleas, provided he did not keep it incessantly in his
eye. Then pictures of his happy time came floating toward him, more and
more in mist-like ranks. There were also pictures that rose in a sudden
glamor round about him, and others flitted by so indefinite, so distant,
that they were gone before he really knew what they were. He sat
silently in the snow, overcome by light and color, by light and
happiness, and the dark fear which he had had at first that something
would come and extinguish all this had gone. It was very still round
about him, a great peace was within him, the pictures had disappeared,
but happiness was here. A deep silence! There was not a sound, but
sounds were in the air. And there came laughter and song and low words
came and light and footsteps and dull sobbing of the beats of the pumps.
Moaning he ran away, ran long and far, came to the lake, followed the
shore, until he stumbled over the root of a tree, and then he was so
tired that he remained lying.