ery little, smaller than
all the rest; in order to keep up he had to try and think of all that
hitherto had made him happy and proud, from the coasting hill to each
kind word. He thought, too, of his mother and his father, who were now
sitting at home and thinking that he was having a good time, and he
could scarcely hold back his tears. Around him all were laughing and
joking, the fiddle rang right into his ear, it was a moment in which
something black seemed to rise up before him, but then he remembered
the school with all his companions, and the school-master who patted
him, and the priest who at the last examination had given him a book
and told him he was a clever boy. His father himself had sat by
listening and had smiled on him.

"Be good now, dear Oyvind," he thought he heard the school-master say,
taking him on his lap, as when he was a child. "Dear me! it all
matters so little, and in fact all people are kind; it merely seems as
if they were not. We two will be clever, Oyvind, just as clever as Jon
Hatlen; we shall yet have good clothes, and dance with Marit in a light
room, with a hundred people in it; we will smile and talk together;
there will be a bride and bridegroom, a priest, and I will be in the
choir smiling upon you, and mother will be at home, and there will be a
large gard with twenty cows, three horses, and Marit as good and kind
as at school."

The dancing ceased. Oyvind saw Marit on the bench in front of him, and
Jon by her side with his face close up to hers; again there came that
great burning pain in his breast, and he seemed to be saying to
himself: "It is true, I am suffering."

Just then Marit rose, and she came straight to him. She stooped over
him.

"You must not sit there staring so fixedly at me," said she; "you might
know that people are noticing it. Take some one now and join the
dancers."

He made no reply, but he could not keep back the tears that welled up
to his eyes as he looked at her. Marit had already risen to go when
she saw this, and paused; suddenly she grew as red as fire, turned and
went back to her place, but having arrived there she turned again and
took another seat. Jon followed her forthwith.

Oyvind got up from the bench, passed through the crowd, out in the
grounds, sat down on a porch, and then, not knowing what he wanted
there rose, but sat down again, thinking he might just as well sit
there as anywhere else. He did not care about going home,