ful gaiety. "Silla has taken a little trip into the
town, too!" she added, laughing.

"Silla!"

"Yes, why shouldn't she? Mrs. Holman is sitting in the cold down there
at a stall, kicking and stamping her feet; why shouldn't her daughter do
the same at the fair ball?"--Jakobina was great at saying witty
things--"especially when she perhaps has some one who will both dance
with her and treat her," she said, letting off another shot, as Nikolai
seemed to be struck dumb.

"Who's put that lie into your head, girl?"

"If I'm lying, so's Kristofa; and that Silla went down with her and
Gunda a couple of hours ago I saw with my own eyes. The one I mean can
afford to give fair-tickets to either three or six. But perhaps they
were going to a prayer-meeting," she added, winking with one eye.

"What nonsense are you talking! You'd better take care what you say!" he
exclaimed angrily.

"Ha, ha!" she laughed; "you're not such a stranger to him--he's almost
related. We're so grand, we are! We heard enough of that from your
mother last summer, when she got him to pay for that fine black dress,
and they wouldn't let her have credit for any more sewing materials for
her shop."

Nikolai had heard enough.

His mother had wrung his very blood from him, and then--deceived him in
spite of it.

He suddenly saw her before him in the cold light of indifference.

She had never been a mother to him, had never cared a pin's head about
him! All this about a mother had only been something he had imagined.

He made a movement with his hands as if he were done with her. The one
she cared about, and had a mother's feeling for, was this--

He did not know whether he had thought the name himself, or whether
Jakobina had said it; but it rang in his ears like the stroke of a
hammer on a shining anvil, as he rushed down:

"Ludvig Veyergang!"

He had robbed him of his mother from his earliest childhood. Was he
going to drag Silla away from him too?

The thought at last became too impossible, and he slackened his pace.

That Jakobina was always so full of gossip and lies! This about Silla
was all nonsense! There was nothing so dreadful in the three girls
having taken a trip down to see a little of the fair; and they made that
sharp-tongued Jakobina, whom they did not want to have with them, think
they were all three going to the ball.

He, he, he! it was Silla who had thought of that! He would tell her he
had seen that at once as soon as s