onscience, without
position, religion, or anything else, with loafers, mountebanks,
drunkards, and--and to tell the truth with women of easy virtue."

"And this after having been engaged to Camilla, good heavens, and after
having been down with brain-fever for three months!"

"Yes--and what tendencies doesn't this let us suspect, and who knows
what his past may have been, what do you think?"

"Yes, and heaven knows how things really were with him during the time
of their engagement? There always was something suspicious about him.
That is my opinion.

"Pardon me, and you, too, Mr. Carlsen, pardon me, but you look at the
whole affair in rather an abstract way, very abstractedly. By chance I
have in my possession a very concrete report from a friend in Jutland,
and can present the whole affair in all its details."

"Mr. Ronholt, you don't mean to...?"

"To give details? Yes, that is what I intend. Mr. Carlsen, with the
lady's permission. Thank you! He certainly did not live as one should
live after a brain-fever. He knocked about from fair to fair with a
couple of boon-companions, and, it is said, was somewhat mixed up with
troupes of mountebanks, and especially with the women of the company.
Perhaps it would be wisest if I ran upstairs, and got my friend's
letter. Permit me. I'll be back in a moment."

"Don't you think, Mr. Carlsen, that Ronholt is in a particularly good
humor to-day?"

"Yes, but you must not forget that he exhausted all his spleen on an
article in the morning paper. Imagine, to dare to maintain--why, that is
pure rebellion, contempt of law, for him...."

"You found the letter?"

"Yes, I did. May I begin? Let me see, oh yes: 'Our mutual friend whom we
met last year at Monsted, and whom, as you say, you knew in Copenhagen,
has during the last months haunted the region hereabouts. He looks just
as he used to, he is the same pale knight of the melancholy mien. He is
the most ridiculous mixture of forced gayety and silent hopelessness,
he is affected--ruthless and brutal toward himself and others. He is
taciturn and a man of few words, and doesn't seem to be enjoying himself
at all, though he does nothing but drink and lead a riotous life. It
is as I have already said, as if he had a fixed idea that he received
a personal insult from destiny. His associates here were especially a
horse-dealer, called "Mug-sexton," because he does nothing but sing and
drink all the time, and a disreputable, lanky,