ne had bravely pushed itself into the light of day,
surmounting all obstacles, denial, tears and preventatives, as a
salmon springs against the stream. Now she lay in the daylight, red
and wrinkled, trying to soften all hearts.

The whole of the community had done with her, she was a parasite and
nothing else. A newly born human being is a figure in the
transaction which implies proper marriage and settling down, and the
next step which means a cradle and perambulator and--as it grows
up--an engagement ring, marriage and children again. Much of this
procedure is upset when a child like Soerine's little one is vulgar
enough to allow itself to be born without marriage.

She was from the very first treated accordingly, without maudlin
consideration for her tender helplessness. "Born out of wedlock"
was entered on her certificate of birth which the midwife handed to
the schoolmaster when she had helped the little one into the world,
and the same was noted on the baptismal certificate. It was as if
they all, the midwife, the schoolmaster and the parson, leaders of
the community, in righteous vengeance were striking the babe with
all their might. What matter if the little soul were begotten by the
son of a farmer, when he refused to acknowledge it, and bought
himself out of the marriage? A nuisance she was, and a blot on the
industrious orderly community.

She was just as much of an inconvenience to her mother as to all the
others. When Soerine was up and about again, she announced that she
might just as well go out to service as all her sisters had done.
Her fear of strangers had quite disappeared: she took a place a
little further inland. The child remained with the grandparents.

No one in the wide world cared for the little one, not even the old
people for that matter. But all the same Maren went up into the
attic and brought out an old wooden cradle which had for many years
been used for yarn and all kinds of lumber; Soeren put new rockers,
and once more Maren's old, swollen legs had to accustom themselves
to rocking a cradle again.

A blot the little one was to her grandparents too--perhaps, when all
is said and done, on them alone. They had promised themselves such
great things of the girl--and there lay their hopes--an illegitimate
child in the cradle! It was brought home to them by the women
running to Maren, saying: "Well, how do you like having little ones
again in your old days?" And by the other fishermen w