been studying, even if it were not wholly
faultless. She first asked if this signified that Skarlie would prevent
the journey. When Magnhild, instead of making any reply, fled into the
bed-chamber, Roennaug again followed her; she said that _to-day_ Magnhild
must listen to her.

This "to-day" told Magnhild that Roennaug had long been wanting to talk
with her. Had the window Magnhild now stood beside been a little larger,
she would certainly have jumped out of it.

But before Roennaug managed to begin in earnest, something happened.
Noise and laughter were heard in the street, and ringing through them an
infuriated man's voice. "And _you_ will prevent me from taking the
sacrament, you hypocritical villain?" After this a dead silence, and
then peals of laughter. Most likely the man had been seized and carried
off; the shouting and laughing of boys and old women resounded through
the street, and gradually sounded farther and farther away.

Neither of the two women in the chamber had stirred from her place. They
had both peered out through the door toward the sitting-room window, but
they had also both turned away again, Magnhild toward the garden. But
Roennaug had been reminded by this interruption of Machine Martha, who in
her day had been the terror and sport of the coast town. Scarcely,
therefore, had the noise died away, before she asked,--

"Do you remember Machine Martha? Do you remember something that I told
you about your husband and her? I have been making inquiries concerning
it and I now know more than I did before. Let me tell you it is unworthy
of you to live under the same roof with such a man as Skarlie."

Very pale, Magnhild turned proudly round with:--

"That is no business of mine!"

"That is no business of yours? Why you live in his house, eat his food,
wear his clothes, and bear his name,--and his conduct is no business of
yours?"

But Magnhild swept past her and went into the sitting-room without
vouchsafing a reply. She took her stand by one of the windows opening on
the street.

"Aye, if you do not feel this to be a disgrace, Magnhild, you have sunk
lower than I thought."

Magnhild had just leaned her head, against the window frame. She now
drew it up sufficiently to look at Roennaug and smile, then she bowed
forward again. But this smile had sent the blood coursing up to
Roennaug's cheeks, for she had felt their joint youth compared in it.

"I know what you are thinking of,"--here Roenn