im, to see
that he learnt his lessons," and he hardly dared so much as to glance
across at Silla.

As to Holman, experience had taught them that his fixed and staring eyes
saw nothing: he sat mute and quiet the whole evening. In Mrs. Selvig's
tap-room he found a remedy which made him insensible to moral lectures
even the most reasonable and impressive. There he stood every evening a
quarter of an hour after working-hours, as regular as clockwork, and
when the hands of the clock drew near to eight, he just as regularly set
off homewards, a punctuality which, be it said in passing, had gained
for him in the tap-room the title of _General with order_.

CHAPTER III

A FIGHT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

That was a dangerous corner, where the wide street leading to the
grammar school crossed the narrow one that led to the board school; and,
on the days when the afternoon hours for the latter began just when the
grammar school's long morning was over, it might happen that the free,
exuberant spirits of those who were leaving school came into collision
with the heavier and more bitter mood of those who were on their way to
it.

Ludvig Veyergang, with his sealskin satchel on his back, had already
travelled this road for several years. He had been nicknamed the
Ostrich, because of his little head with the bird-like nose, his long
bare neck, and the way he walked. When he met Nikolai, he pretended not
to know him, and Nikolai whistled and clattered with his shoes on the
pavement.

The board school's new slide ran along the gutter a good way out into
the grammar school street. It was the product of the joint work of many
for a whole week, and fate willed that Nikolai, at the head of a string
of comrades, should come full speed down it, hallooing and shouting,
just as Ludvig Veyergang and a few others came round the corner. Young
Veyergang received a push that made him drop his pencil-case; and pens,
lead and slate pencils lay strewn over the ground.

"Pick them up, you beggar!" he cried to Nikolai, for it was he who had
knocked up against him. "I shall tell about you at home, you may be
pretty sure. Pick them up, or--"

A kick sent a few loose lumps of snow in answer.

"You shall be made to bend soon enough, if that's what you want. Father
shall be told, this very day, that you are the leader of the street cads
in the town; and if no one else will tell your mother about it, I'll
tell her myself, however much she crie