bitious never is happy,"--and he gazed up with an
old man's calmness into God's peaceful heavens above.

CHAPTER VI.

Half a year later--in the autumn it was (the confirmation had been
postponed until then)--the candidates for confirmation of the main
parish sat in the parsonage servant's hall, waiting examination, among
them was Oyvind Pladsen and Marit Heidegards. Marit had just come down
from the priest, from whom she had received a handsome book and much
praise; she laughed and chatted with her girl friends on all sides and
glanced around among the boys. Marit was a full-grown girl, easy and
frank in her whole address, and the boys as well as the girls knew that
Jon Hatlen, the best match in the parish, was courting her,--well might
she be happy as she sat there. Down by the door stood some girls and
boys who had not passed; they were crying, while Marit and her friends
were laughing; among them was a little boy in his father's boots and
his mother's Sunday kerchief.

"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" sobbed he, "I dare not go home again."

And this overcame those who had not yet been up with the power of
sympathy; there was a universal silence. Anxiety filled their throats
and eyes; they could not see distinctly, neither could they swallow;
and this they felt a continual desire to do.

One sat reckoning over how much he knew; and although but a few hours
before he had discovered that he knew everything, now he found out just
as confidently that he knew nothing, not even how to read in a book.

Another summed up the list of his sins, from the time he was large
enough to remember until now, and he decided that it would not be at
all remarkable if the Lord decreed that he should be rejected.

A third sat taking note of all things about him: if the clock which was
about to strike did not make its first stroke before he could count
twenty, he would pass; if the person he heard in the passage proved to
be the gard-boy Lars, he would pass; if the great rain-drop, working
its way down over the pane, came as far as the moulding of the window,
he would pass. The final and decisive proof was to be if he succeeded
in twisting his right foot about the left,--and this it was quite
impossible for him to do.

A fourth was convinced in his own mind that if he was only questioned
about Joseph in Bible history and about baptism in the Catechism, or
about Saul, or about domestic duties, or about Jesus, or about the
Commandme